Mirak

World Premiere: Diverse Works, Houston, Texas December 15-18, 1999

Recreation as Music-Film Recital for Houston Composers Alliance: Shepherd School of Music, Houston, Texas January 30, 2001

This surrealist sci-fi opera portrays the dramatic shift in the mindset of Romola, a cosmonaut abandoned on the spaceship MIRAK.

After seven years of orbiting Earth, Romola’s physiological chemistry changes. She experiences a series of hallucinatory mental break-downs which enable her to reconfigure her reality and live as a new, mutated being. The audience is invited to a cinematic journey of the mind at the dawn of a century.

MIRAK uses familiar opera conventions to strikingly new effects, integrating movement and narration on stage with video projection, 3D animation, puppets, sculptures, and an electronic score performed live by a small orchestra and three singers. Created during their dance residency at DiverseWorks, the opera highlights AlienNation Co’s multimedia, computer-driven conception of visual choreography, storytelling, and live mix.

Music by Steve Pare

libretto by Angeles Romero

animations by Serena Lin

scenography by Don Calledare

additional digital imagery by Mel Landin

choreography by artistic director Johannes Birringer.

Performances are by Andee Scott, Nancy Hardy, Terry Hughes, Angeles Romero and Macarena Ortúzar.

Guest vocalists are distinguished mezzo-soprano Isabelle Ganz and soprano Mary Hines.

Russian voice by Sonia Tabarovski.

Lighting design is by Christina Giannelli

Technical supervision by Sam Jones.

a new dance opera by AlienNation Co.

SYNOPSIS

This new sci-fi opera portrays the dramatic shift in the mindset of Romola, a cosmonaut left behind on the abandoned spaceship MIRAK. After three years of orbiting Earth, the cosmonaut’s biological functions are altered by her external conditions. Suspended inside her ship deprived of stimuli, the cosmonaut struggles to support her old patterns of acculturation and semantic reality. However, her body gradually learns to adapt to the environment and supplement her biological system with a new instinctual programming that will prohibit past imprintings from being transferable/readable in her memory construction.

Her internal process is represented by a progressive deconstruction of the cosmonaut’s ability to carry out operational duties and reports. When the cosmonaut becomes aware of her mental disintegration, she requests to return to earth, yet due to political interests she is denied her retrieval. An accident in the space station severs communication with Earth. This accelerates the cosmonaut’s mental and emotional breakdown.

The artificial conditions of her environment have progressively altered significant aspects of her physiological chemistry. This chemical adaptation of the body partially deletes and fragments the former conceptual programming. The cosmonaut reconstructs a new semantic reality while transforming into a hymenoptera queen and retracing her memories and symbolic creations to fit her altered biological system.