On The Cusp

On the Cusp features three works from the historical avant-garde that lie on the cusp between music and theatre and the premiere of a new work. NON:op Open Opera Works director Christophe Pressing and an ensemble of actors and musicians from the new music community consider the questions: Where are the boundaries between sound, speech, act, silence, metaphor and the real? Who determines who is “in,” who is “out” and who is “other”? On the Cusp interrogates these and other boundaries. Artists with and without disabilities perform liminal works of the past century—Sam Shepard’s Tongues, Samuel Beckett’s Cascando and Tristan Tzara’s The Gas Heart—and a new work with poetry by Gwendolyn Brooks. Poised between theatre, music and movement; between story, song and act; between mundane, alien and ecstatic—these works open onto worlds of difference and interrogate the boundaries between “outside” and “inside.” Zephyr Director and SITE/less Co-Director Michelle Kranicke directs the movement of The Gas Heart/Gentleman Dancer in Tzara’s The Gas Heart, an abstract silent dancer moving about the space, circulating over, under and through the actors and musicians.