I always feel a bit odd being back in Durham twenty-five years on.

Even weirder to be doing a show in the theater that I basically first held a wrench in.

Less weird to read a nicely written article in the Indpendent by Chris Vitiello:

104 ears at the time, David Lang’s The Whisper Opera recalibrates attention 

“Frequent collaborators, Lang and Findlay have been challenging the conventional audience-performer relationship for years. Findlay’s overnight performance Dream of the Red Chamber is designed for a crowd falling in and out of sleep. Lang’s work “Crowd Out,” inspired by the singing of soccer stadiums, is written for a chorus of at least 1,000.

They’re both tinkering with tipping points. If they make a piece that’s too challenging for an audience to access, they might find complete disengagement. But if they can position the performance at the fulcrum, they might solicit the audience’s engagement at a profound, even thrilling degree.”

Here’s hoping.

Tony Arnold and KIvie Cahn-Lipman in Whisper Opera