R. Murray Schafer’s Patria Cycle is an ambitious catalogue of ten large scale music theater works defined by their gesamtkunstwerk ideology, inter-related characters, themes, and musical motifs, with an emphasis on site-specific performance. The fifth work in this cycle, titled “Patria V: The Crown of Ariadne”, is a three-hour performance scripted and scored for chorus, dancers, actors, drummers and harp that treats the myth of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth. Schafer later published an abridged version of six dances from the work for solo harpist with percussion, distilled into a palatable account for the Western Classical concert stage. The wide popularity of the concert version naturally stifled any effort to produce the original work with its large-scale theatrical trappings, condemning Schafer’s vision to languish unrealized. In adopting a philosophy around the cycle which precludes viable performance by exacting outrageous feats of scale, location, and duration, he guarantees a sense of control over the works while shielding them from external vulnerabilities. However, one could claim that the boundaries and limitations of the works in Patria are a test by Schafer, a crafted provocation to determine who is actually capable and therefore deserving of undertaking the journey of the cycle. 

In adopting the latter viewpoint, I have been eager to revisit “The Crown of Ariadne” with a production that would provoke Schafer’s vision, motivated not by a desire to reinvigorate a contemporary work, but rather to compare the concert version with a fully realized interpretation in order to examine the effectiveness of such practices in my own music. How does the ceremony of theatrical design and site-specific performance alter the perception of a sound-based experience? Can the use of multimedia ritualize performance in a way that amplifies the work without distracting from the music itself? Schafer himself speaks of “…the change that occurs when we are lifted out of the tight little cages of our daily realities, to be hurled beyond our limits into the cosmos of magnificent forces, to fly into the beams of these forces and if we blink, to have our eyes and ears and senses tripped open against the mind’s will to the sensational and the miraculous…”

In search of that spirit of transformation, I approached the production as an experiment that would provide limitless space for play and inquiry, bound only by financial considerations. To achieve maximal effect in my roles as both performer and maker, I collaborated with artist Patrick Michael Ballard who aided me in the production of masks and other objects, opening me up to techniques that are new to my practice in working with neon and silicon. Every aspect of the performance was imbued with meaning and ritual, from making some of the instruments myself to selecting a location that allowed for filming to take place outside and at night. The objects were produced through discussions and sketches which emphasized the symbology, characters, and narrative events I wanted at the foreground of my interpretation.

With the music already so evocative of Greek-ness and dramatic narrative, I focused on creating theatrical elements that would provide expressive juxtapositions. The result is a study of contrasts: the ancient quality of the music collides with the New Wave glow of the neon sign, the ornate baroque styling of the harp in sharp relief against the guts, blood, and gore strewn about the instrument. Acrylic, wood, silicon, brass, silk, and neon oppose one another, shrouding the scene in a magical ether. This converging of materials is an attempt to blur the lines between the natural and the unnatural world, fantasy and reality, good and evil, highlighting the paradox at the heart of the myth: who is more of a monster, Minotaur or Man? The imagery of the masks subscribes to the Jungian idea of the persona as an artifact taken up to conceal and extends that awareness through a lexicon of symbols and abstraction. In this way, it is not only Ariadne at the harp, but Theseus, the Minotaur, Pasiphae, and many others, their collective hands pulling at the strings of the harp and drawing out the notes of a song that is repeated throughout the cosmogonic cycle.