PREMIERE: Footscray Community Art Centre, Melbourne 7th-17th March 2019 as part of the International Women’s Day program.​

A Feminist Re-Imagining .....

‘M: Kaddish For The Children’ is a new visual/cinematic-style performance work based on both the classic Euripides and the Heiner Muller's texts of Medea, but told from the woman’s perspective,and intertwined with the Kaddish, the Jewish Mourners Prayer. In the work, the central female ‘character’ is given a voice as she intones (in various ways) the Kaddish. It is a Kaddish for her loss of place, her loss of identity and loss of her children as well as for children lost in clashes of civilisations and tribes, both pst and present.  ‘M’ is predominantly an image-based work, combining visual language and the body with original sound/composition, lighting, some text, to create an episodic, visceral performance that is cinematic in style.

 THE WORLD OF THE M: KADDISH FOR THE CHILDREN: ‘M’is set in an environmental wasteland – a despoiled’ landscape – awash with sand, rocks, fish bones, echoing the themes of the work and Medea’s underlying internal sensibility (and loss of Mother Earth?). In the centre of the space is a “river” of water, evoking the journey of the Argos, as well as referencing contemporary issues of migration. In the space is a water rower - a core set piece that is used continuously throughout the piece. As it is rowed, its inherent sounds are incorporated into the overall sound design.The audience sits within the environment – not on the seating bank. They are implicitin the action, heightening the viscerality of the experience.

SOUNDSCAPE above: Despoiled LandscapeV1 by Jacque Soddell
Jacques: Sound is used in the piece as a textual landscape in which the piece exists. My composition is intended for multi channels and the soundscape will emerge from different and surprising places in the space (including the fish bones in the landscape). I have already collected and recorded sounds for the piece which I have begun to put together as sound compositions. These include the sharpening of knife blades; water sounds, street sounds and some natural environmental sounds. My work is an investigation into experimentation in deconstructing natural sounds (field recordings) to create new sounds & textures for performance. ​

 ​​I have no city, no mother, sister or relation.
I was carried off,
A trophy from a barbarian country.
                                       Medea
 
CREATIVE TEAM:
Deborah Leiser-Moore: Concept, Writer and Performer 
Richard Moore: Dramaturgy and Performer
Jacques Soddell: Sound Designer
Susan Bamford Caleo: Vocal Director
 

Performance:
2019
Footscray Community Arts Centre 
International Women's Day Programme

​Development:
2017/2018
Development at Footscray Community Arts Centre
2016
Residencies at:
Domino (Zagreb, Croatia) 
​​2015
Directors Lab Melbourne