THEATRE UZUME | FEBRUARY 14th - MARCH 2nd, 2024
As a toddler, I would wander around my backyard screeching improvised melodies at the top of my lungs, so who’s to say when I became a composer. I try to bring that same chaotic, spontaneous, fearless energy into my work as an adult. I am deeply invested in story and composition for stage, I love to connect personally with the scenes and create emotion-driven improvisations, which will then turn into the score. My main instrument is violin, which makes me a melodic thinker that approaches harmony in an unconventional way as I take ideas to piano or guitar as a means to flesh out structure.
The Tiger’s Bride started out as a variety show that Suzanne Karpinski (Director, choreographer, writer, producer) was developing to pre-existing music that I had released. As the show grew bigger, the songs became more connected, and a series of stories began to unfold. I happily took on the role of composer, determined to arrange existing material and compose new work to score a series of vignettes thematically tied to the larger overarching story. My goal is to help immerse the audience deeply in this sonic world, carrying the message of the story directly to their hearts.
I met Suzanne in 2017 performing with The Daughters – a theater collective – and found immediate kinship as musicians and storytellers. We connected over new forms of narrative, Kate Bush, and Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey.
“Part circus theater, part haunted house, and fully immersive, The Tiger's Bride brings you, the guest, to the wedding night of Giles de Rais, aka "Bluebeard." What lies within his mansion is up to you to explore and discover.
Each performance of The Tiger's Bride welcomes 40 guests to explore Monsieur de Rais' Manhattan mansion - a four-story immersive space - while helping the new bride unlock his secrets and being entertained by his mysterious staff.
Created by Theatre Uzume and developed at the 2024 Artist in Residence program at Nancy Manocherian's the cell theatre, The Tiger's Bride illuminates classic fairy tales through the eyes of maligned protagonists as they rewrite their own stories, dragging our darkest desires into the light.”
Glory is about a bird in a cage waiting for the sun to rise. The concept is fitting for the first act where the new bride of Bluebeard is seeking a glorious romance and doesn’t know the danger she has gotten herself into.
Bird + Cat is the playful second performance, scoring the Puss In Boots story from The Bloody Chamber. Completely irreverent and conniving with ambiguous intent.
The Snow Child is composed for this project; scored for Angela Carter’s story of the same name. Created from improvised live loops and based on Suzanne’s choreography as well as the text, I sought to create an ominous snowscape with a romantic heart for drama and tragedy.
Regular Cassanova is about the seductive nature of the bad boy archetype. It serves in support of one of Carter’s takes on “Beauty and the Beast” called The Courtship of Mr. Lyon, where the Beast and Beauty develop a deep relationship.
MESS is about frantically struggling at the bars of an abusive pattern. The choreography for The Erl King’s piece involves a cage. These stories were connected before I knew it.
Giulia deals with fighting off a relentless, violent guilt complex. It scores the choreography of Wolf Alice; the story equates womanhood and wolf-hood, realizing what is shameful as a potential source of power.
Amado Mio is a cover of the traditional song recorded by Pink Martini. It is not included here but scores the choreography for In The Company Of Wolves – a playful take on “Little Red Riding Hood,” where Red dominates the wolf.
No Rivers of escaping a desolate town to a place with more life. The Lady Of The House Of Love,(choreographed to this song), is a dark and vampiric take on “Sleeping Beauty.”
Haunt is the final song in the show. It’s about a haunted house and haunted homeland, and witnessing someone deal with their own ghosts. It closes out the story – underscoring the ghostly nature of all the characters and their dynamics.
ADDITIONAL MUSIC
In addition to the songs proper there will be background music played throughout the The Cell Theatre (on every level) that will cut in and out between the acts, almost like a radio broadcast. It will be thematic of all the above, but reorchestrated and recorded to sound like instrumental cafe-band music of the 1920’s with some light, anachronistic synth here and there – just to keep things interesting.
For the wedding ceremony I arranged a section of Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde. This piece is specifically mentioned in The Bloody Chamber as one of Bluebeard’s favorites and as an opera he attends with his bride-to-be while courting her.
Lastly, there are three sung duets between me and the “Mother” character. A Bird In A Gilded Cage is a ballroom song from the 1910’s about a beautiful girl married to a wealthy man and dies from a lack of love in her marriage. Mack The Knife is a jazz standard about a murderous but handsome man. Black Is The Color Of My True Love’s Hair is a beautiful, meditative folk song with a rich history of varied interpretation through English and American culture.