Shana Moulton & Nick Hallett Stage An Opera

What is your tree? In this film, artist Shana Moulton and composer Nick Hallett collaborate on the opera Whispering Pines 10—rehearsing and performing this one-act production at the New Museum of Contemporary Art as part of the Rhizome New Silent series. The opera, directed by Elyse Singer, features additional performances from the soprano Daisy Press, voicing the subconscious thoughts of Moulton’s alter-ego Cynthia, and the vocalist Katie Eastburn who plays an environmental activist modeled after Julia “Butterfly” Hill, who famously lived for over two years in a 1,000-year-old California Redwood tree in order to protect it from being cut down.

A new take on the operatic form of the monodrama or “mad scene,” the agoraphobic and hypochondriacal Cynthia struggles with her domestic interior—filled with kitschy New Age objects—turning to nature to discover that her life is boundless and full of magic. Drawing on the artist’s own biography for narrative inspiration, Moulton says “I’m presenting my own struggle, my own paranoia or neurosis…this personal, fallible point of view.” Staged in a multimedia virtual environment that compliments the dream-logic of the opera’s narrative, Moulton’s video imagery and wordless movements are synchronized with Hallett’s original score and libretto in a form of dynamic live animation.

Originating at The Kitchen in 2010, Whispering Pines 10 has toured to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, and The Andy Warhol Museum, among other venues. It is currently being developed as an Internet serial drama with support from Creative Capital.

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