Elsewhere

Maya Beiser – cellist, peformer, artistic creator
Robert Woodruff – director
Riccardo Hernandez – scenic and costume design
Philip Bussmann - video design
Bill Morrison - video
Beth Morrison – producer

Commissioned by Carolina Performing Arts at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Cellist Maya Beiser and Theater Director Robert Woodruff are collaborating on a new, evening-length multimedia work in two acts. Elsewhere is a bridge across the end of a world. It depicts the experience of two women who are caught up in a terrible catastrophe, which they do not understand, have no part of and are unable to prevent. Separated by time and distance, they call out to each other, sharing a sense of puzzlement about the brutality of their existence.

The first act (50 minutes) is based on a particularly haunting and mysterious text “I am writing to you from a far-off country” by the Belgian Surrealist Henri Michaux; A young woman witnessing a world as it is coming to an end. Trapped in a surreal world, filled with Incomprehensible threats, she is trying to make sense of it all.

Set in a dreamlike environment, with lush and multilayered music by Eve Beglarian, the piece involves Ms. Beiser performing her acoustic cello with live computer and electronics, a female singer and three dancers.

The atmosphere is surreal where places and time are unclear: What is that world that is being destroyed? Is it a real place? Is it our world? Is it an inner world? Our youth? Our innocence? A dream? A nightmare? A memory?

“I am writing to you from the end of the world. You must realize this.
Often the trees tremble. We collect the leaves.
They have a ridiculous number of veins.
What for?
There is nothing between the tree and the leaves anymore.
And we go off troubled.
Could life not continue on earth without wind?
Or must everything tremble always, always?”

The second act (40 minutes) is the violent end of that world. It will open with Michael Gordon’s Industry for electric and distorted solo cello. Images of the destruction brought upon by the industrial revolution and a “cello cage” made of steel, will surround the lone cellist on the stage.

The final episode is inspired by the biblical story of Lot’s Wife, with text by Erin Cressida-Wilson and music by Missy Mizzolli. A woman writes from a barren, brutally sexualized milieu of forced evacuation and loss.

Punished for daring to feel, to reflect, to defy the order of a cruel and unjust power, she is forever suspended between life and death, forced to look back at the destruction of her world. A lone observer of human folly.