TRIPLICITY
© David Lowe and Greg White, 26 November 1997
Three performance spaces, three stories, three musical styles - three interlinked visions of
a Threepenny Opera for the new century... Triplicity is an exciting new experiment
into the possibilities of musical theatre.
Today we are being asked to digest more
information than ever before. In what is supposedly the age of communication, separating knowledge
from data is an increasingly difficult task. Triplicity will address this issue for an
audience who have become accustomed to a world of information bombardment and emotional/technical interaction.
The result will be an optimistic but not simplistic piece of musical theatre;
a magical, humanist experience which will be informed by technology but not controlled by it
.
Although new technology is radically changing the way we live, many of the greatest
problems confronting us as a society, and as a species, were equally familiar to the author
s of two classic works, The Threepenny Opera (Brecht/Weill - 1928), and its antecedent,
The Beggar's Opera
(John Gay - 1728). Despite the lingering promise of a brave new world, injustice and
exploitation have not gone away. Triplicity will explore the themes
of those earlier works using new, non-linear, narrative techniques and interactive musical
performance.
Triplicity is not one show, but three. Three casts,
three venues, three musical styles, three librettos. The experiences will be inter-related, sharing broad
narrative paths and character types, but not identical. Most importantly, all three performances will take place at once. Individually, they will be intriguing pieces of a puzzle. Together, they will form a coherent whole. Opera 1 will take place
in the main theatre. Electronic audio/video interaction will play a large part in this piece, which like all three will be based loosely on The Beggar's Opera, in this case updated to Australia at the last gasp of the twentieth century.
Cabaret 2 will
take place in the foyer of the main venue. Set 100 years ago, in 1900, it will portray a more ramshackle Australia which also felt itself to be on the verge of tremendous opportunity; the approach of Federation, the height
of Dame Nellie Melba's fame, the beginnings of the film industry in Victoria. On the darker side, this was a time of bubonic plague in Sydney, and the Boer War in South Africa. Instead of the well-resourced performance space of Opera 1, there will be a sense here of an environment half-built and incomplete.
Street Theatre 3, will happen outside the main performance space, on the banks of the river. Set in 1800, it will focus on European Australia's uncertain beginnings; a time of floods and drunken orgies, political prisoners and convicts, with rum running everything and corruption rife. This was also a time of discoveries; of the plains to the west and Port Phillip to the south; a time when maps were being redrawn, and wars were being fought with Australia's indigenous people. Street Theatre 3 will be linked to the other venues using sound and vision.
Triplicity will bring together performers from the opera, cabaret and popular music worlds. There will be at least one singer/actor and one musician/actor in each show, as well as other singers and musicians. Use of video and other technology will be scaled according to the size and style of each performance space. Innovative non-linear multimedia works will be an influence. Earlier experiments in parallel, simultaneous theatrical coexistence will also be referenced, such as the final scene of Act 1 of Mozart's Don Giovanni.
During performance, each space will have access to the other two time/place domains via a live multimedia network; stimulating telepathic, technological and visionary links between the worlds. Audiences will be encouraged to attend all three venues on separate nights. Each interaction will be heard and viewed by its respective audience, but framed and interpreted differently according to its context. The scripting for the integration of these interactions will be complex, but considering our shared experience
(please see CVs), certainly not impossible.
The structure of Triplicity will lend
itself successfully to themes such as land, identity, community and alienation in the information
age, as well as the fragility of history. It will facilitate exploration of interaction, layering,
and multi-dimensional story-telling. It will bring history up hard against the present, and force
audiences to reconcile both in the hope of a better future.
In a short period of time, people have changed from being hunters and gatherers of information to human filters. By dramatically demonstrating Australia's transition from an isolated prison island to being part of a wider, networked reality, Triplicity will remind audiences that this is not a passive process. Whether we embrace the external or turn within at this point is up to us...