Frontier is a solo theatrical opera, comprised of nested stories inspired by John Ford’s 1956 film, The Searchers. On October 16th Colin Gee will give a short presentation of his work to-date on the project that will include projected images, text, and music composed by Gee’s sister Erin Gee who is based in Graz. Gee will give a presentation at New York Theatre Workshop in the spring of 2011.
The performance will occur within a series of locations – video stills projected against layered semi-transparent screens – in which one actor will, as one story is nested into the next, embody all the characters. The shifting between characters throughout the piece will employ historical performance genres such as melodrama, tragedy, clown, and Commedia dell’Arte. The shifts between performance styles will also parallel shifts from the linear events of the narrative to the inner psychological processes of the characters. Interposing the live spoken voice into an electronic score, Frontier extends the operatic use of spoken dialog.
The locations in which the narrative is set will reference those seen in specific works held in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s permanent collection (many of which include the work of Edward Hopper), made available as a resource through Colin Gee’s Whitney Live residency.
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