Pig Iron Theatre Company's New Symphonic Theater Show to Meditate on Climate Change

Pig Iron Theatre Company, the internationally acclaimed, Philadelphia-based organization, has announced A Period of Animate Existence, an ambitious new multimedia production that meditates on perhaps the most pressing issue facing this and future generations-climate change, which threatens to result in the loss of 20-50% of all living species on earth-and asks, "How do we contemplate the future in such a moment?"

Composer Troy Herion, designer Mimi Lien and director Dan Rothenberg co-conceived and are co-creating the work, which weaves together the perspectives of children, elders and machines. In collaboration with a team of accomplished theater and music artists, they are developing A Period of Animate Existence in workshops and residencies over the course of this year, including one at An Ecotopian Toolkit for the Anthropocene, a conference that the Penn Program in the Environmental Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania presents April 13-15. The world premiere performances, featuring a cast of actors and choirs including The Crossing, will take place in Philadelphia in September.

A Period of Animate Existence began with a small, somewhat absurd idea: that of a children's choir scolding their grandparents about the despoliation of the Earth, and then changing places with them. However, as Herion, Lien and Rothenberg explored this impulse, they quickly found that reducing climate change to a tug-of-war between two opposites-young vs. old, fatalism vs. call-to-arms-would mean drowning out a range of important considerations and points of view. Instead, Rothenberg, explains, the artists have taken on a more complex challenge: "to create a piece that brings into focus rhythms and emotions that we feel particularly suited to address: how generations interact and communicate; how we imagine the trajectory of life in this particular moment; how children stand in for hope, defiance, responsibility and even a ruthless vital energy that seeks to expand into the universe."

A Period of Animate Existence echoes the character and pacing of a 19th-century symphony, while drawing from multiple art forms and genres. The work, lasting approximately 80 minutes, consists of five staged movements or "hallucinatory visions." Between each movement are short, minimalist encounters between children, elders and musicians. Like a symphony, the movements are unrelated narratively, yet they complement each other sequentially in mood, tempo and texture, producing a cumulative effect.

They include:

- Movement 1, Con Moto Maestoso: An orchestra performs an evocative primordial prelude as a ballet of scenic forms moves through light and projections.

- Movement 2, Andante Cantabile: The stage overflows with dozens of people. Together in groups large and small, they sing candidly about planetary cycles, sex, reproduction, death and inheritance.

- Movement 3, Scherzando: A single halal cart with a scrolling LED screen gradually gains consciousness and ponders its role in the universe.

- Movement 4, Recitative: A group of children and elders speak directly to the audience about the future. Their words take on musical qualities and transform into song while elaborate dioramas roll on and off stage.

- Movement 5, Danza di Rocce: A visualization of Henri Bergson's "élan vital," the force that separates the living from the non-living. Multiple generations amass on the stage amid a tableaux of muscular bodies struggling, wrestling. A choir sings in hushed tones behind the sound of steam hissing through valves.

Herion, Lien and Rothenberg-with collaborators including playwrights Kate Tarker and Will Eno, lighting designer Tyler Micoleau, choreographer Beth Gill, chamber choir The Crossing and chamber orchestra Contemporaneous-are working with actors and musicians to create a work that is part concert, part theater production, in the vein of Robert Wilson & Philip Glass' seminal Einstein on the Beach, Lee Breuer's concert-play The Gospel at Colonus, and the more recent work of Heiner Goebbels.

While A Period of Animate Existence is an interdisciplinary departure for all of its co-creators, each of them brings to the collaboration an artistry that has long been synesthetic in some way. Herion, who has studied how physical action creates "sounds" in the mind, creates "visual music" compositions: remarkably tuneful works of music and film in tight counterpoint. He takes inspiration from early 20th Century visual music pioneers such as Oskar Schlemmer, who made the Triadic Ballet. Lien, the MacArthur "Genius" Award-winning set designer of landmark works including Taylor Mac's A 24-Decade History of Popular Music and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' An Octoroon, speaks about space in musical terms. Rothenberg trains actors to work rhythmically and musically.

A Period of Animate Existence is not intended to influence policy directly, but aims instead to occasion a meditation on the language used by one generation to address another, the difference between the animate and the inanimate, and the visceral feeling that the force of life itself permeates our notions of minerals, plants, animals, people and time.

Pig Iron will announce venue and dates for the world premiere of A Period of Animate Existence soon. They are developing the work through residencies at SUNY Purchase, in Purchase, New York (January 15-21 and May 22-28); EMPAC (The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center), in Troy, New York (February 21-25); and at the conference An Ecotopian Toolkit for the Anthropocene, presented by the Penn Program in the Environmental Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia (April 13-15). Featuring keynote addresses by Rebecca Solnit and Dr. James Hansen, the conference will explore the anthropocene: the proposed name for the present geological epoch, in which humans are the most potent force shaping earth's systems. The company will perform work in progress from A Period of Animate Existence April 14 at 8:30pm and on April 15 at noon at the Arts Bank (601 S. Broad St.).

Founded in 1995 as an interdisciplinary ensemble, Pig Iron Theatre Company is dedicated to the creation of new and exuberant performance works that defy easy categorization.

Over the course of 20 years, Pig Iron has created over two dozen original works and has toured to festivals and theatres in England, Scotland, Poland, Lithuania, Brazil, Ireland, Italy, Romania and Germany. The body of Pig Iron's work is eclectic and daring. Individual works have been inspired by history and biography (Poet In New York, 1997, and Anodyne, 2001), rock music (Mission to Mercury, 2000, and James Joyce is Dead and so is Paris: The Lucia Joyce Cabaret, 2003), American kitsch culture (Cafeteria, 1997, and Welcome to Yuba City, 2009), serendipity (Dig or Fly, 1996, and The Snow Queen, 1999), and scientific research (Pay Up, 2005/2013, and Chekhov Lizardbrain, 2007). In 2001, Pig Iron collaborated with legendary theatre director Joseph Chaikin (1935-2003) to create an exploration of sleep, dreams and consciousness (Shut Eye).

In 2005, Pig Iron won an OBIE Award for Hell Meets Henry Halfway, an adaptation of Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz's novel Possessed; in 2008, Pig Iron won a second OBIE for James Sugg's performance in Chekhov Lizardbrain. Pig Iron's staging of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night was nominated for ten Barrymore Awards for Excellence in Theatre, and won four. Individual pieces are often developed in residency at other theatres and universities. The company made Philadelphia its permanent home in 1997. Visit www.pigiron.org.

Co-creator Troy Herion is a composer and filmmaker whose works unite contemporary music with lm, theater and dance. His compositions range from avant-garde orchestral music to pop-influenced electronic scores. His visual-music films Baroque Suite and New York: A City Symphony have been called "marvelous" by The New Yorker music critic Alex Ross, and were featured on MTV and performed with an orchestra at Carnegie Hall.

Co-creator Mimi Lien is a designer of environments for theater, dance and opera. She is artistic associate with Pig Iron Theatre Company and co-founder of JACK, a performance space in Brooklyn. Her work has been recognized by numerous awards, including a Lucille Lortel Award, Hewes Design Award, OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence and 2015 MacArthur Fellowship.

Co-creator Dan Rothenberg is a co-founder and co-artistic director of Pig Iron Theatre Company. He has directed almost all of Pig Iron's original performance works, including the OBIE Award-winning Chekhov Lizardbrain and Hell Meets Henry Halfway. Rothenberg's work has toured to 15 countries on four continents. He is the recipient of a Pew Fellowship in the Arts (2002) and a USA Artists Knight Fellowship (2010).

Will Eno is a playwright produced all over the world. His play Thom Pain (based on nothing) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. The Realistic Joneses appeared on Broadway in 2014, received a Drama Desk Special Award and was named best American play of 2014 by The Guardian. He is a Helen Merrill Playwriting Fellow and recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship.

Beth Gill is a choreographer who has been making contemporary dance and performance in New York City since 2005. Gill's works include Untitled (2006), Eleanor & Eleanor (2007), what it looks like, what if feels like (2008), and Electric Midwife (2011). Gill has been commissioned by New York Live Arts, The Chocolate Factory, The Kitchen, and Dance Theater Workshop. She has received a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award (2015), was a 2013-2015 New York City Center Choreography Fellow, and a 2015-2016 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Extended Life artist-in-residence.

Tyler Micoleau is a lighting designer for theatre, opera and dance. His productions include designs for Lincoln Center Theater, The Public Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, Dallas Opera, and Huntington Theater. He is the recipient of an American Theatre Wing Henry Hewes Design Award, two Off-Broadway Lucille Lortel Awards, and two Village Voice OBIE awards including one for Sustained Excellence.

Kate Tarker is a Brooklyn-based playwright. Her plays include THUNDERBODIES (nominee, 2017 L. Arnold Weissberger Award), An Almanac for Farmers and Lovers in Mexico (2015 Kilroys List), and Laura and the Sea (2016 Kilroys list; finalist, 2016 L. Arnold Weissberger Award; finalist, 2016 Princess Grace Award).

Contemporaneous is an ensemble of 21 musicians whose mission is to bring to life the music of now. Recently recognized for a "ferocious, focused performance" (The New York Times) and for its "passionate drive...setting an extremely high bar for other ensembles to live up to" (I Care If You Listen), Contemporaneous performs and promotes the most exciting work of living composers through innovative concerts, commissions, recordings, and educational programs.

The Crossing, led by Artistic Director Donald Nally, is a professional chamber choir dedicated to new music. Hailed as "superb" by The New York Times, the Crossing is the recipient of the 2015 Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence, two ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming and has sung at Walt Disney Concert Hall, The Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall.

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