THEATER

NAAMA TSABAR

Melodies of Certain Damage, Opus 5

Sat. 14 May 2022 | 1pm and 3pm

Sat. 21 May 2022 | 1pm and 3pm

Naama Tsabar (b. 1982, Israel) fuses elements from sculpture, music, performance and architecture, in works that reconceive gendered narratives, and shift the viewing-and-listening experience to one of active participation.

In Melodies of Certain Damage, Opus 5, shattered pieces of guitars form a landscape of musical debris, suggestive of a past of violent breakage. But by having mapped that breakage, Tsabar has been able to reassemble the remains on the gallery floor and string the pieces back together. Tsabar's process of destroying-and-recreating subverts the iconic trope of the song-ending guitar-smash and recontextualizes this climactic act as generative, interactive, and intimate. The sum of the broken pieces becomes a new instrument that Tsabar and her female-identifying and gender non-conforming performance collaborators become entwined with, as they kneel and lie next to the pieces they play, summoning a new sonic terrain from out of the damage.

Composed and performed in collaboration with:

Rose Blanshei, Larkin Grimm, Maya Perry, Sarah Strauss and Naama Tsabar.

Sound Technician - Katie Lau