Nothing is Broken

• movement #1 – What if I just…?
• movement #2 – Who is Commanding Who?
• movement #3 – I Remain in the Dark
• movement #4 – Out of Sight, Out of Mind
• movement #5 – Nothing is Broken

This piece is filled with questions. Nothing is Broken is a portable mini opera that resembles a ceremonial rite and the initial inspiration was Beckett’s tragicomedy “Waiting for Godot.” Maybe it was inevitable then that what would end up was this existential opera. After all, if one presents a question, it assumes that they are waiting for an answer and it’s really more of a realization or acceptance that the answers may never come or will they? We, as a society, are in a place of questioning right now. And we, as individuals, also find ourselves in a sea of questions. Therefore, taking delight in the asking of questions, without necessarily providing answers, seems to be the appropriate course of action at this point or is it?

Performed by Julie Adler & Sylvia Desrochers
Music by Julie Adler, text/lyrics by Julie Adler & Sylvia Desrochers
Staging by Sylvia Desrochers

This is the audio recording of the entire piece.

Presented at REDCAT: STUDIO ‘08 in Los Angeles, CA and Theatro Caliente in Phoenix, AZ as well as at Beyond Baroque and Dangerous Curve Gallery in Los Angeles.

© 2008 all rights reserved

Chair follows the sorrowful existence of a woman, chair and environment. A perspective of abandonment and a fable of gendered performance and capital gone awry in an office space in downtown Los Angeles.

“Initially mundane images of a trashed office building are complemented with rhythmic electronic music; eventually a strange conglomeration of woman and chair appears, like some creature from the near future. The office cyborg scuttles from room to room in a genuinely eerie depiction of what could happen if we all keep working so hard.” -Res Magazine

Chair and Performance by Julie Adler
Audio-Visuality by N_DREW (aka Andrew Bucksbarg)

Chair has also be seen at 312 online and the Milk Bar.

©2002 all rights reserved

CHINA

In the summer of 1998 I received from the Durfee Foundations, an ‘Adventures in China Capital Grant’ to go to the most remote part of the Xinjiang province in search of throat (hoomei) singers. I went to the Altai Mountains specifically because this area borders Kazahkstan and Mongolia and it was supposedly a place of shamanistic practices and ritual singing.   It was my intention to not only seek out what perhaps would have been the last of these type of singers to survive the Cultural Revolution but to then take some introductory lessons with one of them.  The grant never hinged on the success of this adventure, it was provided as a way to experience the process.  Below is a follow up paper I wrote on my experience and a video I put together of the music I heard and was a part of along the way.

The Hills Are Alive

Click here to view the embedded video.

Also, on that same trip, on the way back from Xinjiang province to Beijing, I decided to go to Xiahe, a Tibetan town in the Amdo region.  It was there that I met some incredible people, one of whom I created a blog about – Jigme Trinley Ozer Rinpoche, who perhaps planted the seeds that would change my life forever.

When I was just about done with my year living in Paris in 1995, I decided to take a summer trip to visit my relatives in Israel, and also visit the Negev.  One early morning, I walked to the edge of the famous Ramon crater there and it was in those introspective steps there that I knew that on my 40th birthday I would take myself to India.   So for my first trip to India, in 2002, I created an extensive journal of my 4 months there and this is an excerpt from an experience I had at the OSHO International Center in Pune, India.  I was actually living for two months on the other side of town, attending daily classes at the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute but I had heard that the OSHO center had a great pool and good safe organic food.  But in order to go visit there, you have to go through an extensive orientation process and here’s the story:

Tea in the Samovar

I came back to the States in the winter of 2003 with walking pneumonia, on the mend.  And within a week of my arrival back home, my aunt died. Within a few months, George Bush had declared war on Iraq and thousands went into the streets to protest.   What I wrote below corresponds to my sentiments at the time and still resonates deeply.

Twilight in America

The Story of My Life.  Suzanne Knode, at 63 discovered the storyteller within her. She wrote a screenplay for a writing class – which was successful beyond her wildest dreams. She ended up on This American Life on Showtime and is now pursuing screenwriting full-time.  This piece aired on KPFK as part of Experience Talks radio show.