Bestiarium
a new approach to the contemporary musical language of music-theatrical works for young audiences.

In the last few years the number of works (such as operas, concertos, musiktheater and performances) for young audiences has been increasing. Interestingly enough, many of these works turn to old music or folkloric style in order to contextualize their dramatic action. Besides, the label “for young audiences” usually involves a certain facilitation of the musical language, favouring the theatrical and visual aspects at the expense of the aesthetic quality of the musical discourse. Nonetheless, if children's hearing is still free from the conventionalities of traditional harmony, why should we assume that they will not be able to cope with contemporary musical language?, why then offering them only a part of our musical culture when, in reality, they are the most capable of facing the most diverse sound languages?

Bestiarium is an experimental interactive proposal in which musical theater, sound installations and an interactive sound workshop gather together in an hour long stage experience for people from 6 years old and up.
Our aim is to create a work with plenty of symbolic content, based on metaphors, reversals, and parallelisms at the dramatic and musical level and investing in creating an artwork that can be appreciated the same way by adults, without falling back into the Kindertumelei, into dramatic mediocrities or musical trivialities. Therefore, not only taking children into consideration as tomorrow's audiences but also as today's.
With the intent of provoking a real confrontation of children and young people with contemporary musical language, as well as reflecting upon the current dramatic-musical production for all ages, and contributing to the development of new dramatic ways and structures, Bestiarium is thus born.

Final presentation. January 21st 2018, Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin

First version (June 20th 2015, Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin)

The first results of this project were presented on June 20th 2015 in the framework of the Salon of Aesthetic Experiments at Haus der Kulturen der Welt. This event is a collaborative project between the Graduate School at the Forum for Post Graduate Studies at Berlin University of the Arts and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and is kindly supported by the Einstein Foundation Berlin.

Bestiarium develops its plot like an interactive Sound-Walk in which the audience shares the stage with the performers and plays an active role in the plot. For the performance at the Auditorium of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt we created a set design simulating a small labyrinth in which four creatures are placed and introduced along the walk.
Imagen
Model: Àngela Ribera (stage designer)

The starting point of our storyline could be summarized as follows:

The action takes place in the storehouse of unsuccessful books where Ingrid works. This storehouse is a strange place that stores all the unfinished, faulty, or badly written books that were ever forsaken by their authors. The oldest of them all is the Enigm's Book, an enormous book that it is actually the best ever written successful book: The enigmas in the book are so perfect that no one can try to solve them without going crazy. For this reason the book should be hidden but the only way to do this is by playing a magical musical spell with the help of some of the creatures living in this strange storehouse.

The formal development of the story is shaped by the interactions between the actress, the audience, and the different creatures dwelling in the storagehouse. These creatures will help the leading character, Ingrid, by suggesting her and the audience different musical-theatrical exercises. It is like a “Treasure hunt” (in German: a Schnitzeljagd): Once an exercise has been properly performed, the creatures will provide one part at a time of the magic spell that will put the book back where it belongs.

The different creatures are represented by small instrumental nuclei whose hearing space is amplified by the inclusion of different sounding objects. These objects are located at specific points of the stage (as if they were constellations). The performers would move through the dramatic space, drawing trajectories between different points of the stage and gathering in various moments and positions, thus giving shape to the storehouse inhabitants.

The structure of the work is the following:

I – Preamble: Outside the auditorium, Ingrid introduces herself and asks the audience to help her place some books where the Morlocks, the first creatures, work.

II – The Morlocks: The workers of the storehouse of unsuccessful books, whose appearance is inspired by the creatures of H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine, who, in the novel, lived underground handling useless machines.  (Score excerpt)

III – Mirror creatures: These are incorporeal creatures dwelling inside a mirror who feel attracted to sound. They appear when joint movements are performed, and suggest the audience a short movement exercise before helping them. In order to represent these creatures, there will be a vertical mirroring surface refecting the audience. Behind it, there is a camera obscura where the performers are placed with small glowing rings in their fingers. When these come closer to the surface, the mirror becomes translucent, thus allowing the audience to see the lights and not the performers.  (Score excerpt)

IV – The Hidebehinds: Creatures originating from American folklore. The hidebehinds are fast incorporeal animals whose curiosity takes them behind people, but are so shy that they hide before being spotted. In the project, the hidebehinds are part of an installation based on telephones with cables and soda cans.

V – The Kraken: The Kraken is a creature that was sentenced by captain Nemo to live in silence in the storagehouse after attacking the Nautilus submarine. It is represented by a French horn arranged with six hoses (tentacles), 8-10 m in length each one, connected to its valves. The horn player will perform a different sound each time in terms of dynamics and length, which will come out of each hose. These hoses will be distributed along the main foor amid the audience. The activity will consist of finding out the “tentacle” currently sounding, and placing at the tip of the tentacle some of the objects (little sirens, funnels, etc.) which were already provided by the previous creature.

VI – Finale: The audience is split into five groups that will play some of the objects provided by the previous creatures. Along with the Morlocks, who will play their initial instruments (tenor saxophone, piano, and violin) will perform a specific work that will put the book back in its place.  (Score excerpt
Photos: ©UdK-Graduiertenschule_2015
A project by Nuria Nuñez Hierro with the collaboration of Iñigo Giner Miranda (stage director), Àngela Ribera (stage and costume designer) and the performers Vera Kardos, Cathrin Romeis, Meriel Price (DieOrdnungDerDinge), Alba Gentili-Tedeschi, and Manuel Rodríguez Valenzuela.
Salon of Aesthetic Experiments is a collaborative project between the Graduate School at the Forum for Post Graduate Studies at Berlin University of the Arts and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. With the kind support of the Einstein Foundation Berlin.

Second version (October 22nd 2016, Grüner Salon of the Volksbühne Berlin)

We had the opportunity to present  our project within the frame of Graduale 16 at the Volksbühne Berlin, the final event of my grant at the Graduiertenschule der UdK.  Concept and essence of our experimental format still remain but we need to do some modifications because of the venue' change.  Coming up next you can see and hear fragments of the second version of the project at the Grüner Salon der Volksbühne.
But this ist not the end: Thanks to the support of the Haupstadtkulturfonds and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt we'll be the next year at this venue showing the last and definitive version of Bestiarium!
I'm thoroughly looking forward to it!