Artist

Admin

Stage director

Kate Gaul

Conductor

Antonio Fernandez

Lighting designer

Catherine Mai

Video designer

Syl Marie

Singer

Karina Bailey

Soloist

Actor

Pollyanna Nowicki

Siren Theatre company

English

It's still her voice

Sydney City

Australia

It's stil her voice: La Voix humaine Poulenc

Public

Approved

It's stil her voice: La Voix humaine (adaptation)

Siren Theatre Co"Its Still Her Voice "collides both Francis Poulenc’s 1958 operatic adaptation of Jean Cocteau's 1928 one-act play of "La Voix Humaine" ("The...

It's stil her voice, production trailer 2022

Opera and drama.  A singer.  An actor.  A piano. The telephone.  It’s Still Her Voice takes these works to identify how our lives are mediated; from emotions in need of an audience to the role of technology in intimate relationships.
 
This is immersive theatre. A masterclass in human despair.  A portrait of loneliness and, indeed, madness and melancholy.   The edgy atmosphere takes on a frisson of horror when a woman’s lover rings to tell her of their marriage next day. We are helpless against the rising force of her emotions, and ultimately complicit in her disintegration. She checks her mobile for updates and texts. Her response to the chiming noises when she gets a call is Pavlovian in its desperation. We see her deleting old photos and checking her Instagram feed. And the telephone isn’t her only addiction.
 
When our relationships are as much enabled as they are limited by technology, breaking up is hard to do.

"Poulenc's La Voix Humaine approaches both story and form in an act of avant-garde hyperfocus - taking the melodrama of opera lirica down to a single moment, a woman's last phone call with her lover. She is alone on stage and strains against her desire in the audience's unbroken gaze. Kate Gaul's adaptation (Siren Theatre Co) works to a similar forward thrust, pairing the french soprano of Poulenc's opera with an English-speaking actor, to play out the anguish in a different space, and a sympathy is built in the hybrid form - the ubiquitous frustrated response to the phone dropping, the last ditch efforts for reconciliation. On stage, we see the voice and the humanity of Poulenc's The Human Voice, distinct from one another but operating in symphony to create a new work.

 

In the 21st century, this offering is something which opera needs, bucking the trend toward elitism in the form. It is important that the pure enjoyment of opera is not stifled by the sense that it can only be enjoyed by those who can afford to pay several hundreds for the privilege — as it is for theatre — just as it is important to remember that the beauty of good art need not rest upon replica roman columns which extend up and beyond the curve of the proscenium. The adaptation of It's Still Her Voice seeks to benefit both forms - the match of theatre to high quality live musical accompaniment and the drawing out of plot and character from musical pieces often enjoyed only in musical performance, extracted from their theatrical context. It is an endeavour which requires time and support in its development, to best explore the feminist underpinnings which unite the music of 1958 with the theatre of 2022."  Samuel Webster
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Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Cast

Crew