premiere of SUCKTION, a HyperOpera buffa

Anne LeBaron and Douglas Kearney (American Gothic with vacuum);
Nina Eidsheim

Sucktion, my cyber-erotic 'vacuum cleaner' opera with a libretto by Douglas Kearney, and direction by Nataki Garrett, premieres tonight in Los Angeles at REDCAT with performers from the band soNu: Nina Eidsheim, soprano; Gustavo Aguilar, percussion, and Phil Curtis, laptop / electronics. It all began around ten years ago with an extreme sonic experiment: feeding nails and other objects into half a dozen homeless vacuum cleaners (rescued from the streets of Pittsburgh) during an exploratory recording session, with the soprano (and composer) Alice Shields pushing them around and screaming lines such as ‘Oreck, I knew him well.’ When the ensemble soNu approached me to write a work for their group in 2003, I decided to move ahead with the vacuum cleaner idea, and construct a ‘wordless’ experimental piece. I soon invited Douglas Kearney into this process. We invented an initial version of the work, which I scored in blazing colors, in the Microsoft Word program, Excel (a guided improvisation, allowing the players quite a lot of freedom). A recording session for this first effort ensued. Then, in 2007, Sucktion was one of 40 new works selected for a the Multi-Arts Production Fund (a program of Creative Capital supported by the Rockefeller Foundation), from over 650 submissions.

Sucktion follows a woman’s cyber-erotic transformation from abject housewife into a self-sufficient cyborg via the subversive use of a vacuum cleaner. With elements of satire and science fiction, Sucktion critiques sexism, particularly how socially reinforced female dependence on male economic dominance reduces women to domestics without agency: “clean machines.” Sucktion’s narrative arc progresses through six songs: Soap Aria, Sucktion Remix, Anniversorry, Cleaning House, Rabbitroobabot'rumba, and Cyborgasm.

When we first meet Irona (the housewife), she speaks in a patois of jingles, daytime TV and soft rock. Sucktion’s text enacts her metamorphosis into a cyborg via her adoption of an artificial language imagined as creolized English, German and onomatopoeic approximations of appliance sounds. Sucktion furthers investigations of the intersection of written text and aural performance by fusing a typographically performative libretto with experimental concert theater. The text, with its visual collisions of careening type, is at once lyrics, stage directions and environment, recreating daytime TV’s barrage of housekeeping advertisements, chat shows and melodramas in one song and Irona’s appliance-destroying rampage in another.

There are two additional performances on Friday and Saturday (Aug. 1 and 2).

Relocation to Vienna Suburbs

During the past two weeks, I’ve been relocating from a beautiful grand old apartment in the center of Vienna to another just over the city border, in the village of Perchtoldsdorf. In a wine-growing region abutting the Vienna Woods, Perchtoldsdorf turns out to be a sublime location to be placed under semi-imposed house arrest. I’m right up against the finish line to complete my one-woman opera, Sucktion, for the group soNu, with performances scheduled this summer in Los Angeles as part of the New Original Works festival (REDCAT, July 31, Aug. 1 and 2).

However, there are occasional forays out of the apartment that I can’t resist, such as hearing the inimitable Steve Beresford, who I’ve known for nearly 30 years but only see once a decade or so, perform at the Viennese club Porgy and Bess with two terrific Austrian players (Nicholas Bussmann: synthcomputer; Dieb 13: turntables). Chock full of electronic wonders, mix of high and low tech, and toy instruments, Steve’s dynamic, charged sessions at the piano injected the contrast of a live acoustic instrument into the evolving electronic soundscape. We caught up after the concert (Steve remembers me, after all these years, as the composer of Concerto for Active Frogs) and discovered that we both have an intense interest in psychogeography. London, where Steve lives, remains central for all things related to this amorphous but intriguing field. I’m incorporating psychogeography into my HyperOpera course this fall at CalArts. It’s an especially relevant topic for me, with the exposure to the two contrasting geographical locations I’ve lived in during my going-on-four months in Austria, and how they’ve affected me physically and psychically.

The photo taken at Schloss Belvedere, a mere five minute walk from the previous apartment and a place that I would return to every few days for the sheer beauty of its gardens, was taken from Oberes Belvedere. (There are two palaces...upper and lower.) Next to it, one of the first photos after the move, taken during a walk in Perchtoldsdorf. I was drawn to this sign in front of a dilapidated house (unusual to see in a resort village), with its color-coded announcement of two of the ubiquitous spring offerings in this part of the world---strawberries, and asparagus. The Viennese, like the Germans, are expert at growing and preparing ‘spargel’ - wild, green, and white – and offer it as a main course during the peak season. It must be the only vegetable that is purposely grown underground to prevent photosynthesis, resulting in a nutty, mild flavor in the white variety. I have to admit that the asparagus I've cooked or had in restaurants here is lush and almost meaty, compared to our American spears. Maybe we should give the Royal Vegetable more attention and respect, taking a cue from the playful and striking wood sculptures of the artist (and a dear friend), Craig Nutt. (Actually, there's a connection between Craig Nutt and Steve Beresford. They may have never met, but Craig was the major moving force behind the 1976 recording of the Raudeluna Pataphysical Revue, which included, along with covers of tunes like Volare, and our noise-driven Captains of Industry, the first recording of Concerto for Active Frogs.)