TRANSFORMATIONS

Role:
Staging

Producer:
Dutch National Opera Academy

Venue:
Amare, Den Haag – 7, 8, 10, 11 February 2024
More information on https://www.opera-academy.nl/performances/transformations/

Material:
Transformations, an entertainment in two acts from the book of Anne Sexton by Conrad Susa (1935-2013)

Transformations promises an evening with “small comic masterpieces: grotesque, erotic, sly, and playful”. Poet Anne Sexton, self-proclaimed ‘mother of the insane’, transformed Grimm fairy tales into her own poetic language. Sexton’s sharp and dark sense of humour places these fairy tales in the light of her mental state and her social context, without losing the sinister rawness of the Grimm tales. Conrad Susa set Transformations to music, giving the fairy tales a new theatricality. This production places the piece in an intimate and dynamic chamber setting, where the audience can come closer, both physically and intellectually. The spectators will be taken from one fairy tale to another, where metaphors and similes let phantasies and associations roam free.

In the plot, Anne Sexton appears as the Tale-Teller of Transformations. She is the mother of the insane, and she wants to tell them a few stories. She wants to share some odd tales from Brothers Grimm that she transformed herself: The Golden Key, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The White Snake, Iron Hans, Rumpelstiltskin, Rapunzel, Godfather Death, The Wonderful Musician, Hansel and Gretel, and Briar Rose. Before she can tell the tales, she wants to present a clinical case introducing each one of them. In short prologues she describes cases with their symptoms, which transform and modernise the fairy tales that follow.

The prologues and the fairy tales become more and more intertwined, up to the point where it is impossible to consider them separately. Does Anne live in a fantasy? Or are the fantasies her reality?

Musical direction: Sam Weller
Staging and set-design: Rennik-Jan Neggers
Costume and set-design: Sanne Oostervink
Light design: Jasper Nijholt
Physical dramaturgy: Tom de Ronde

Performers:
#1 – Thalia Cook-Hansen / Elisa Maayeshi
#2 Anne Sexton – Samantha Faina / Hannah Gries
#3 Femke Hulsman / Rommie Rochell 
#4 Sterre Decru / Stefanie Bruggeling 
#5 Henrik Enger Holm / Ilmari Leisma
#6 Marcelo Alexandre / Jack Roberts 
#7 Wessel Wirken / Cyprien Crabbé
#8 Fabian Homburg / Jaap van der Wel

Ensemble of students of the Conservatory of Amsterdam

pictures by Reinout Bos

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