Broken Aquarium surveys an impossible ecosystem of endangered or extinct sea creatures. Featuring handmade costumes by Finnish artist Essi Kausalainen and live music by Tim Kinsella and Jenny Polus, this performance presents the intricacies and particulars of non-human life as a foundation for human transformation.
Broken Aquarium is the result of Every house has a door director Lin Hixson and dramaturg Matthew Goulish’s multi-year collaboration with Helsinki-based artist Essi Kausalainen. In 2018, Hixson, Goulish, and Kausalainen initiated The Carnival of the Animals. The project set out to follow the 14-movement structure of Camille Saint-Saëns’s 1886 musical suite for children, devising a corresponding original performance work in response to each of the titles, following those imaginative classifications while focusing on endangered species and the concept of extinction. The first of this series of modular performances was in response to the seventh movement in the suite titled Aquarium. With a commission from the Croatian National Theatre Ivan Zajc Rijecka, it was intended to premiere in Croatia in September 2020 with an international group of performers and collaborators. The premiere was subsequently delayed and then canceled in response to the COVID-19 global pandemic. Eventually, work recommenced on what would become Broken Aquarium.
