Direction and Choreography
A Rough Fiction and London Arts Orchestra co-production
1st performed at Wilton’s Music Hall, Monday 16th July 2018, 7.45pm
Variations on Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht
Based on the poem by Richard Demel
Conducted and Arranged by Edward Farmer
Directed and choreographed by Simon Pittman
Text by Helen Millar and Simon Pittman
Associate Direction and Dramaturgy by Helen Millar
Lighting Design by Dan Saggars
Cast includes: Christopher Akrill and Sonya Cullingford
Devised by the company
A 100-year love story, 100-years after Women’s Suffrage, told through a blend of dance-theatre and live music.
In Verklärte Nacht two lovers meet in a moonlit forest, one carrying a dark secret that threatens to tear them apart. Much has changed since 1899 when Schoenberg was inspired by Dehmel’s narrative poem about love and motherhood to compose his symphonic poem for strings. Today, 100-years after Women’s Suffrage, ‘The Expected’ will re-imagine both words and music, creating a new take on this dramatic love story, and exploring society’s shifting relationship to gender, equality and family.
Edward Farmer (BBC, London Arts Orchestra) takes Schoenberg’s string sextet as the starting point to reimagine it as a new piece of orchestra-theatre. Musicians and performers interact on stage in Simon Pittman’s staging that blends live music with dance and visual storytelling; The Expected explores multiple variations of the poem’s original narrative in a multifaceted and intimate love story.
‘A sense of imaginative possibility that is impossible not to embrace. Uniformly excellent, Rough Fiction push the boundaries between movement and the spoken word’ (What’s On Stage)
‘An orchestra of fine musicians… Edward Farmer conducts with a discriminating ear for orchestral sonority and pace’ (Evening Standard)
Images: Helen Murray, 2018