Dumbworld and Irish National Opera Present THE SCORCHED EARTH TRILOGY

Acclaimed artist-led creative production company, Dumbworld announce a new series of three free projected Street Art Operas. The Scorched Earth Trilogy, a co-production with Irish National Opera, devised in Dumbworld's distinctive style, blending two seemingly incompatible art forms into an original and accessible urban experience while allowing the public to reimagine the Dublin walls on which they appear on Friday 25th March and Saturday 26th March. Tickets are free with essential pre-booking opening on Saturday 26th February via INO.

Heralded as 'three Street Art Operas for the end of the world', the new collection of works - 'Trickledown Economics', 'Won't Bring Back the Snow' and 'Revival' - each tackle some of the most pressing social, political and human issues we face today, in a radical and challenging way. Written and directed by Dumbworld's John McIlduff, with musical composition from Brian Irvine, each piece has been born out of a growing societal mistrust of politicians, questions around our place in the planet and within nature while also occupying a positive space in which solutions and saviours are explored.

The new series of three short pieces offer a unique blend of opera, contemporary orchestral music, street art and animation, presented as a mapped video and sound installation which have been designed to be experienced in public spaces, with the audio transmitted to wireless headphones. The exceptional format of these innovative works allows new audiences to be reached, by creating a powerful communal experience in projecting work on the city's streets, yet still an artistically intimate listening experience through the use of wireless headphones.

Brian Irvine, Composer, Dumbworld, said: "Scorched Earth blurs the boundary between the real and the cartoon - three projected worlds painted with a grotesque, exhilarating, poetic sound full of wild flamboyant orchestral outbursts and ethereal overlapping waves of sound. Operatic voices - sung and spoken, cascading and arguing. The music is at times impressionistic, robust, at others - filmic, brutal, modernist and sweeps across the visual landscape like a changing climate: adapting, commenting, comforting. Young voices, older voices, dystopian, utopian but ultimately hopeful. The works play with the notion of opera and all it is and isn't - traditions embraced and rejected simultaneously. Disruptive art at its best!"

John McIduff, Writer/Director, Dumbworld said: "At the core The Scorched Earth Trilogy is desire for the work we create to be part of the cultural and political conversations that we are having today. Not behind doors but in the one place that is supremely accessible: the street. It's not by chance that advertisers assail us with images outside. They have long understood the power of art in public spaces.

"In each of these pieces we've tried to be inquisitive; wriggling our way through what we feel are important social and political questions and trying to find our way into the uneasy and darker corners. Sometimes provocatively, sometimes humorously but always led by a desire to be led by the ever-shifting emotions and infinite complexity of the world around us."

Fergus Sheil, Artistic Director, Irish National Opera said: "While being 100% operatic in their DNA, The Scorched Earth Trilogy turns the idea of opera upside down and inside out. These operas are short, making their point directly and powerfully. They don't belong in opera houses, but on the street where they can be enjoyed by anybody, including audiences that may never have come to live operas. They use new technology to tell stories that are about the most pressing issues facing us on Planet Earth. But the operas also don't forget that they are there to entertain as well as to engage. They are both fun and irreverent while at the same time being moving and thought-provoking. Essential watching."

Katie Davenport, Designer, said: "The design for Scorched Earth uses the visual language of the internet and the post internet era where everyone can capture imagery and generate digital art. We were interested in visuals from popular culture and adverts, manga, music videos, surrealism, Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram filters and gifs. The design work engages with green screen, props and costumes to create imagined futures and realities as artificial and glowing. The work is cartoon-like, highly filmic and a satire on contemporary life."

Trickle Down Economics

"As long as we don't treat the climate crisis like a crisis, we can have as many conferences as we want, but it will just be negotiations, empty words, loopholes and greenwash."

Greta Thunberg

Welcome to a pissing contest at Davos. Swollen by champagne and self-congratulations, a gang of suited politicians relieve themselves against a wall expounding on their successful resolutions while drawing out economic models on the wall in front of them as young boys do in fresh snow. Their liquid economic theories trickle down the wall stretching out as a toxic sea on which float the boats of refugees they have created.

Won't Bring Back the Snow

Forced into the city by the disappearance of its natural habitat a father and daughter polar bear search through trash for something to eat. The daughter, however, has other ideas. Her follower numbers are growing - Tik Tok could be their way out of this misery. This little white ass, gonna pay for our dinner.

Revival

"There is no control and no all-powerful creator, either no more 'God' than man but there is care, scruple, cautiousness, attention, contemplation, hesitation and revival." Bruno Latour

Inspired by the writings of philosopher Bruno Latour. A wasteland. Burnt trees. Decaying rubbish. But children still play. Revival presents a dystopian world of children forced to wear gas masks as they skip and swing. But these same children are at the heart of an ecological revolution planting seeds that grow into wondrous, colourful plants.

The Scorched Earth Trilogy by Dumbworld, co-produced by Irish National Opera takes place from 8pm-10.30pm on 25th and 26th March at The Berkeley Library, Trinity College Dublin.

Tickets are free but pre-booking via INO is essential.

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