Note: All three works presented each night.

REDCAT's annual New Original Works Festival kicks off with a program of works by Opera Povera, Poor Dog Group and Susan Simpson.

POOR DOG GROUP: THE MURDER BALLAD
With a volatile mix of desire, jealousy and emancipatory yearning, Poor Dog Group's latest movement-based work gives forceful physical life to Jelly Roll Morton's legendary 1938 recording. Originally performed in the brothels of New Orleans’ steamy Storyville district, Morton's song revels in the nastiness of its heroine’s voice, embodied here by Jessica Emmanuel, whose feral physical energy lays claim to the violent impulses of a woman betrayed. Directed by Jesse Bonnell, The Murder Ballad delves into the myth of female madness and racialized representations of sexuality.

“Poor Dog [Group] has emerged as a polished, professional and visionary presence on the international avant garde theater scene.” —LA Weekly

OPERA POVERA: TO VALERIE SOLANAS AND MARILYN MONROE IN RECOGNITION OF THEIR DESPERATION
Opera Povera artistic director Sean Griffin and vocalist Juliana Snapper pay tribute to renowned composer Pauline Oliveros with an illuminatingly operatic staging of her score from 1970, written shortly after Oliveros read Valerie Solanas' SCUM Manifesto. Oliveros' title connects the tragic lives of two iconic women and through her wordless composition, structurally evokes the feminist principles Manifesto sets forth. Griffin floods the stage with saturated light in a nuanced reflection of Oliveros' timbral shifts, while Snapper's powerfully vulnerable voice is visited by a luminous future-presence, offering the solace of future freedoms with palpable emotional force.

“Snapper sings the voice as limit...unbearably raw, a flayed shred of human need, desire, pain.” —The Drama Review

SUSAN SIMPSON: EXHIBIT A 
In Exhibit A director and puppeteer Susan Simpson blends historical fact with speculative fiction to explore the convergence of radical visionaries that populated the hills of Silver Lake in the 1950s. Archival letters and journal entries delve into the lives of landmark figures, including Harry Hay and John Lautner, while unnamed alien visitors roam the transforming landscape. Using model replicas, green-screen video effects and live music by Pitch Like Masses, Simpson and her performers—both human and puppet—generate a moody, disorienting vision of an era of shifting consciousness that has profoundly shaped the present.

“Simply mind blowing... manages to depict an easily caricatured subculture with tenderness, brutal honesty and astonishing realism.” —LAist