Artists on the Verge: Recent Episodes
Ema Katrovas
Join Czech-American classical singer Ema Katrovas on her ongoing narrative research project which seeks to find out what it means to be an independent artist in the 21st century. In each episode, Ema interviews a different "indie" artist - from free improvisors to poets, independent book publishers to small opera company founders and beyond. For more about this podcast and the related blog and YouTube channel visit onthevergetrilogy.com.
The first season of Classically (Un) Trained will run from October to December 2024.
For more information visit: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/
In what I hope is the last update before I launch the first season of the new podcast, in this episode I will:
1) Tell you about audience survey results (including reading out some responses about performing artists' frustrations and responding to a repeating theme which surprised me)
2) Describe the podcast to come (including some titles of episodes I'm writing)
3) Tie up some loose ends from the last podcast!
Currently the best way to stay up-to-date is the newsletter, which you can sing up for HERE.
New Website (under construction): classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com
Here is a full written presentation of the new podcast:
Classically (Un)Trained - Performing Artists (Re)Inventing Themselves in Times of Hardship and Technological Change
Classically (Un)Trained is a companion for classically-trained performers who are on a journey to (re)invent themselves for the 21st century and (re)discover meaning in what they’ve trained so hard to master.
…
Performing arts degrees are likened to pyramid schemes, auditions are called cattle calls, and artists who make a living from performing are the 1%.
If you’re a classically-trained actor, singer, instrumentalist or dancer, you’ve heard these quips before and you’re well aware - thank you very much - that you’ve trained hard to fit into a very elite but, as it turns out, very overcrowded market - and one that is shrinking under your feet.
Most advice for young performers focuses on how to break into the industry, make enough money from gigging, or find the right parallel career. Those things are important, but something’s missing. What about the need to find meaning in what you do, beyond just chasing after your next stage "fix"? What about the fundamental need to be part of a community of people you respect and admire, not just ones you need to outcompete? What about the importance of doing something you know is relevant, meaningful and even, dare we say, essential?
In every episode of the first season of Classically (Un)Trained, we’ll explore artistic solutions to the economic, social, and technological problems facing the 21st century classically-trained performing artist and explore how performers can find meaning in their work not just despite of, but also thanks to, the unique challenges they face today.
About the host:
Ema Katrovas is a classically-trained singer. She spent her formative years singing in regional Czech theatres. After the pandemic, she pivoted to contemporary classical music and cultural journalism, attending the Aix-en-Provence festival’s cultural journalism workshop and completing a two year Artist Diploma residency at the High Conservatory in Lyon, where she created and performed in the one-woman vocal-theatre show Diva Lazarus. She is currently working on a doctorate at the University of Strasbourg/HEAR with a thesis called A Poor Opera: In Search of Vocal Theatre. www.emakatrovas.com
In this quick update, I'm going to pitch you on my idea so far for an as-yet-unnamed podcast! But mainly - I need YOUR help to name and focus it.
FILL OUT THE SURVEY HERE: https://forms.gle/12SG1TbPDe4khm7G7
Sign up for the Newsletter here.
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Host of Artists on the Verge, Ema Katrovas, shares her next-day impressions after a live show she created which was two years in the making - and, more importantly, how her experiences around the budget, the technical aspects of the show, the reactions of the public, and the show's prospects for the future may hint at a new focus for the podcast.
Here are links to the YouTube and Instagram accounts where you can find some of the shorts/reels about the show which Ema published in the month leading up to the show:
- YouTube Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSFIN5ke8euZ18W2hUWGKNnd0MGCdSjVB
- Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/artists_on_the_verge/
(During this episode, Ema mentions Jerzy Grotowski's Poor Theatre without much explanation - you can actually learn more about that in the shorts/reels linked above.)
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Welcome to another conversation from the high/low art divide between opera-singer-turned-experimental-performer Ema Katrovas and comedian-and-TV-writer-turned-novelist Nicholas Anthony.
I was going to put the film the Sudbury Devil (whose creator I interviewed on this podcast) to rest - but then I stumbled across Susan Sontag’s essay “Notes on Camp” and I realised “camp” kind of explains EVERYTHING about how Nick and I (i.e. a comedian and an opera singer) had very different reactions to this film - namely why Nick HATED it and I didn't.
So what does “camp” have to do with certain corners of YouTube, the piece of outsider cinema called the Sudbury Devil, and how might it explain why two people might have different reactions to a particular work of art?
Timestamps:
00:00:00 Intro
00:00:02 Conversation about why Nick didn’t like the Sudbury Devil
00:34:44 Interlude and disclaimer to the creators of the film (“the opposite of love isn’t hatred, it’s indifference”)
00:35:66 Understanding Susan Sontag’s “Notes on Camp”
00:53:58 Why camp MIGHT explain Nick’s dislike of the Sudbury Devil (disclaimer: this features Ema’s hot take on camp which she may revise)
01:08:40 So what is camp? (and final thoughts on Sudbury Devil)
01:12:59 Outro
My interview with Andrew Rakich on the Sudbury Devil: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/artistsontheverge/episodes/52-A-Friendly-Debate-With-Andrew-Rakich-On-His-Epic-Micro-budget-Film---The-Sudbury-Devil-e2euolq
Links:
- 💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: https://artists-on-the-verge.com/
- 👀 Instagram: @artists_on_the_verge
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Welcome to another conversation from the high/low art divide between opera-singer-turned-experimental-performer Ema Katrovas and comedian-and-TV-writer-turned-novelist Nicholas Anthony. This episode is the second half of a two-part series recorded in New York City - this time, fresh off of our experience of Sleep No More at the the McKittrick Hotel, an immersive theatre experience created by the British theatre company Punchdrunk. So what is Sleep No More? Is it a theatrical experience based on Shakespeare’s MacBeth, Alfred Hitchcock’s film noir Rebecca, and a real witch trial that took place in 1697 in Scotland, which is how it’s advertised? Or is it an aesthetic haunted house? Or is it just an elaborate method of selling cocktails? Let's find out... Sleep No More website: https://mckittrickhotel.com/events/sleep-no-more/Music: The bar did not end up getting back to me about who was playing live music that night. If I ever find out, will credit the musician/singer here. (If you or someone you know played Scallywags Irish Pub on 9th Ave Between 38th and 39th street late on January 10th, please let me know!) As background for my description of the experience, I used a recording someone uploaded to YouTube after smuggling a recording device into Sleep No More (!) - given that it's been up for a while, it seems the creators don't mind much: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYg0thPEPVw&t=2602s Peggy Lee's rendition of "Is That All There Is?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sWTnsemkIsLinks: 💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: https://artists-on-the-verge.com/ 👀 Instagram: @artists_on_the_verge--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/artistsontheverge/message
Welcome to another conversation from the high/low art divide between opera-singer-turned-experimental-performer Ema Katrovas and comedian-and-TV-writer-turned-novelist Nicholas Anthony.
This episode is the first half of a two-part series recorded in New York - in this case, directly at the Metropolitan Opera.
We recorded this episode sitting in our seats in the Family Circle, during both intermissions and right after the end of a performance of Zefirelli’s classic production of Puccini’s La Boheme, one of the most popular, if not the most popular, operas of the last century and, even better, one that tells the story of aspiring artists.
The cast we heard on January 8th at the Metropolitan Opera:
Conductor: Marco Armiliato
Mimi: Elina Stikhina
Rodolfo: Stephen Costello
Musetta: Kristina Mkhitaryan
Marcello: Adam Plachetka
Schaunard: Rodion Pogossov
Colline: Krzysztof Bączyk
Benoit/Alcindoro: Donald Maxwell
Met Opera Chorus
Link to the recording I used as "illustration footage": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_1OtRt0_ho
Cast of the recording (though you don't get to hear most of them):
Mimì: Mirella FreniRodolfo: Luciano PavarottiMusetta: Annarita TalientoMarcello: Lucio GalloSchaunard: Pietro SpagnoliColline: Nicolai Ghiaurov
Conductor: Daniel Oren
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A conversation with Adrew Rakich of @AtunSheiFilms on his micro-budget period horror movie The Sudbury Devil. Watch on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/FXYgbsub4ggRent or Buy the Sudbury Devil here: https://atunsheifilms.vhx.tv/products/the-sudbury-devil00:00:00 - Intro - why I'm doing this interview (TALKING ABOUT THE FILM'S CONTENT)00:01:41 - What does it mean to shock with your work? 00:09:20 - Ema's feminist critique 00:25:27 - The historical basis of Puritan devil worship (END OF SPOILERS - TALKING ABOUT INDIE CREATING) 00:31:17 - Are YouTubers Indie or Mainstream? 00:39:22 - The YouTube branch of arts funding and why Andrew chose it 00:44:11 - Andrew's update to his optimistic video about YouTubing00:55:24 - Andrew's advice for dealing with a crowdfunded platform 01:01:00 - The critics are always right 01:03:57 - The Co-Op model of film funding (I don't usually use title generators - but this AI-generated title was just hilarious) 💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: https://artists-on-the-verge.com/👀 Instagram: @artists_on_the_verge--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/artistsontheverge/message
Comedian-and-TV-writer-turned-novelist Nicholas Anthony and opera-singer-turned-experimental-performer Ema Katrovas talk to William Deresiewicz, author of /Death of the Artist: How Creatives Struggle to Survive In the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech/. This book argues that artists have a harder time making a middle class living today than in previous generations - but is this true? And how does it effect the art and entertainment that’s made today?
Here is the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/p3YIytFgvAY
Timestamps might be off by about 30 seconds: 00:00:00 Intro: The Two Stories Told About Being an Artist 00:01:04 Why did /Death of the Artist/ need to be written now? 00:02:31 But hasn’t it ALWAYS been hard to be an artist? 00:05:03 How is all this unique to artists? Aren’t a lot of middle-class professions in danger?00:06:08 What is Art with a capital “A” and why is it under threat? 00:09:06 The TV Renaissance is Over (Amending the section on TV in /Death of the Artist/)00:11:06 Is interviewing 140 artists really representative of the arts industry? 00:15:56 Is it helpful for individual artists to look at the issues of the arts industry ? 00:17:58 Is art really “boring” now? And why does William Deresiewicz not watch movies in movie theatres? 00:21:16 Blockbusterisation and the loss of the creative middle class 00:25:15 But isn’t there actually a glut of good content now? (going back to the article “We’re all Bored of Culture Now”) 00:32:22 Isn’t journalism a form of art? And is it not subjective? (i.e. Nick pushes back) 00:34:04 Blaming wokeness for boring art 00:43:12 What if you’re depressed after reading /Death of the Artist/? Is there an actionable takeaway? 00:45:35 How do you reconcile pouring your youth and talent into an arts education that has no chance of leading to a satisfying career? How to repurpose creative skills? 00:52:06 What does the gamification of internet popularity say about the value of art? How does the internet lower the time and skill put into creative endeavours? 00:58:12 The 1000 true fans model - does it work? 00:59:07 “Everyone is an artist”: The Romantic myth that led to the Silicon Valley myth / David Graeber and Nicka Dubrovsky’s essay “Another Art World” 1:03:50 The lifecycle of an artist and how artists are discouraged as children1:06:32 Saying goodbye (jazz clubs and experimental theatre shows we’re going to see)Links to stuff we talk about: The Death of the Artist: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250125514/thedeathoftheartistArticle “We’re all Bored of Culture”: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/bored-of-culture-william-deresiewicz Article “On Not Drinking the Kool Aid”: https://salmagundi.skidmore.edu/articles/434-on-not-drinking-the-kool-aid💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: https://artists-on-the-verge.com/👀 Instagram: @artists_on_the_verge
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Welcome to another conversation from the high/low art divide between opera-singer-turned-experimental-performer Ema Katrovas and comedian-and-TV-writer-turned-novelist Nicholas Anthony.
For this end-of-the-year episode, Nick and Ema decided to talk about The Beatles and their influence on a few pieces of “high art”: new journalist Joan Didion’s essay “The White Album” and avant garde singer Cathy Berberian’s covers of Beatles’ songs. They also briefly talk about American composer Ned Rorem’s essay “The Music of the Beatles”. Their starting point is a 2021 documentary by Peter Jackson, Get Back.
Nick and Ema circle around the question: Were the Beatles exceptional, lucky, or both? Does one need opportunity or even fame to create one’s best work? Is trying to tell a story about the Beatles, or any other iconic artist, that answers these questions even useful?
Music excerpts from this episode:
- Revolution 9 from the Beatles’ White Album (1968)
- Gavin Bryars' “Jesus’ Blood Never Found me Yet”(1971)
- Cathy Berberian’s cover of “She’s Got a Ticket to Ride” (1977)
- Cathy Berberian’s Stripsody (1966)
Things mentioned in the episode (in order of appearance):
- “Now and Then” (new Beatles’ song): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opxhh9Oh3rg
- Deresiewicz’s essay “We’re All Bored of Culture Now”: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/bored-of-culture-william-deresiewicz
- Get Back, the Beatles documentary by Peter Jackson (it didn’t come out “last year” like we said but in 2021): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles:_Get_Back
- Bernstein’s lecture on the Beatles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v32U0mjGz6g
- Rick Beato’s music channel: https://www.youtube.com/@RickBeato
- Joan Didion’s book of essays “The White Album”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Album_(book)
- Ned Rorem’s essay “The Music of the Beatles”: https://jdsalas.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/article-the-music-of-the-beatles-.pdf
- Susan Sontag’s “Notes on Camp”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_on_%22Camp%22
- Collection of academic essays on Cathy Berbarian: https://www.routledge.com/Cathy-Berberian-Pioneer-of-Contemporary-Vocality/Karantonis-Placanica-Verstraete/p/book/9780367669294
Links:
- 💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: https://artists-on-the-verge.com/
- 👀 Instagram: @artists_on_the_verge
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Welcome to another conversation from the high/low art divide between opera-singer-turned-experimental-performer Ema Katrovas and comedian-and-TV-writer-turned-novelist Nicholas Anthony.
On Nick’s last night in Prague, Nick and Ema went to see the world-premiere of a contemporary opera by Richard Braxton, Trillium X, at the DOX Center for Contemporary Art in Prague. They recorded this reaction that same night.
Some things mentioned or not remembered:
- Anthony Braxton: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Braxton
- Ostrava Days: https://www.newmusicostrava.cz/en/ostrava-days/about-festival/
- Petr Kotík’s composition I took Aderol to attend: Many Many Women
- Patricia Barber: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Barber
- The image of the opera house Ema mentions comes from the book The Gilded Stage: A Social History of Opera : https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/gilded-stage-daniel-snowman/1020670873
- Leonard Bernstein’s Candide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candide_(operetta)
- The librettist of Nixon in China (which premiered in 1987): Alice Goodman
Links:
- 💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: https://artists-on-the-verge.com/
- 👀 Instagram: @artists_on_the_verge
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An Opera Singer and a Comedian Walk Into a Bar is a segment of the Artists on the Verge podcast which features conversations from the high/low art divide between comedian and TV writer Nicholas Anthony and your host Ema Katrovas.
In this episode Nick and Ema attempt to finish reading the chapter on the film industry from William Dereziewits’s Death of the Artist. They also talk about some real-life stories from trying to make it in the film and TV industry and quite a bit about YouTube and the small YouTube creator strategy, including a detour on the canceling of YouTuber Lindsey Ellis. They also talk a lot about technology and mind control, among other things.
Some things mentioned which merit citation:
- Duplass brothers book /Like Brothers/: https://www.randomhousebooks.com/books/535098/
- Sizzle for My Girlfriend’s a Doll (the project that didn’t quite make it into the Sundance lab): https://vimeo.com/175526344
- Documentary about making Apocalypse Now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearts_of_Darkness:_A_Filmmaker%27s_Apocalypse#:~:text=Hearts%20of%20Darkness%3A%20A%20Filmmaker's%20Apocalypse%20is%20a%201991%20American,directed%20by%20Francis%20Ford%20Coppola.
- Coffeezilla (investigative journalism YouTube channel): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffeezilla
- Everyday Astronaut (YouTube channel about rockets) : https://www.youtube.com/@EverydayAstronaut
- Czech dancer Yemi who was selected to go to the moon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coG6kDB9pzc
- Contrapoints (YouTuber): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ContraPoints
- PhilosophyTube (YouTube channel): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abigail_Thorn
- Lindsey Ellis: https://www.youtube.com/@LindsayEllisVids
- Lindsey Ellis' investigative journalism piece on the Hobbit movies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTRUQ-RKfUs
- Contrapoints essay on Canceling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8
- Lindsay Ellis cancelling: https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/former-youtuber-lindsay-ellis-says-s-learning-live-trauma-canceled-rcna35389
- The art anthropologist we don’t mention by name: Ellen Dissanayake
- Cambridge Analytica documentary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Hack
- The Priest’s Children (the Croatian comedy Nick would like to adapt): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Priest%27s_Children
- Article about the Israeli show Shall We Kiss and the Czech version Až po uši (that Ema participated in translating): https://medium.com/warnermediaent/hbo-europes-original-series-head-over-heels-and-when-shall-we-kiss-now-available-a2040b2bdb1a
- Exporting Raymond Documentary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exporting_Raymond
- Mr. Beast: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MrBeast
- Elisabeth Gilbert’s TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_your_elusive_creative_genius?language=en
Links:
- 💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: https://artists-on-the-verge.com/
- 👀 Instagram: @artists_on_the_verge
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Melissa Watkins is a writer, mostly of non fiction and science fiction. She’s also one of the most truly cosmopolitan people you'll ever meet. Originally from the US, she spent a substantial portion of her life first in the UK then in South Korea, putting into practice her specialisation in multiculturalism through non-colonial lenses in a multitude of ways in both corporate and academic spaces. She decided to return to the US after the pandemic which ended up being an eye-opening experience, one which becomes a major theme of the interview. The other major themes of the interview emerge from the host's first conversation with Melissa, about the internet and AI as it pertains to artists. Some links:
- Melissa's blog Equal Opportunity Reader: https://equalopportunityreader.com/
- Melissa's article "A Repat's Guide to Boston": https://statesider.us/repats-guide-to-boston/
- For other publications by Melissa a good place to go is the "about" section of her blog: https://equalopportunityreader.com/about/
The music track for this episode is Alsad suugaa eej by the Earthling vocal troupe (which Melissa sings in): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lTqLrthvKQ
(Apologies for background noise due to the host being post-illness and having to suck on a lozenge to keep from having coughing fits.)
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An Opera Singer and a Comedian Walk Into a Bar is a segment of the Artists on the Verge podcast which features conversations from the high/low art divide between comedian and TV writer Nicholas Anthony and your host Ema Katrovas.
In this episode, Nick and Ema start reading the chapter on the film and TV industry in Death of the Artist (a book they discussed in the last episode after meeting the author) - which sets them off on some controversial subjects, including women in the film industry, with mixed results (Ema gets something like feminist revenge when she expresses her oddly strong distaste for the movie The Social Network.)
Some things we mention which merit citation:
- The Death of the Artist by William Deresiewitz: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250125514/thedeathoftheartist
- Mr. Beast (in case you don’t understand what Nick means by “Mr Beastification”): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MrBeast
- The Social Network: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Network 💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: www.artists-on-the-verge.com
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This is an audio version of an article I wrote arguing against using the phrase "everyone is an artist."
Read the full article here: https://medium.com/@ema.katrovas/we-need-a-more-boring-definition-of-artist-4b4aa9f76832
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An Opera Singer and a Comedian Walk Into a Bar features opera-singer-turned-experimental-performer Ema Katrovas, talking to comedian-and-TV-writer-turned-novelist Nicholas Anthony. They have conversations from across the high/low art divide with the goal of being honest about what a life centring art - high or low - actually looks like. Nick and Ema recorded this episode directly after attending a talk by William Deresiewitz, author of Death of the Artist: How Creatives Struggle in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech. Links to stuff we talk about:
- William Dereseiwitz - The Death of the Artist: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250125514/thedeathoftheartist
- Network effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect
- Tangerine (movie shot on iPhones): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangerine_(film)
- Nebula (creator-led alternative to YouTube): https://nebula.tv/
- The installation Ema worked on for the Muzeum of Literature in Prague was called Abaceda. There is no link - you would have to go to the Muzeum of Literature of Prague: https://www.muzeumliteratury.cz/en/
- OpenSea: https://opensea.io/
- The American royalties-collecting institution: https://www.ascap.com/ 💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: www.artists-on-the-verge.com
👀 Instagram: @artists_on_the_verge
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Welcome to episode 2 of this segment of the Artists on the Verge podcast called an Opera Singer and a Comedian Walk Into a Bar. It features your host, opera-singer-turned-experimental-performer Ema Katrovas, talking to comedian-and-TV-writer turned-novelist Nicholas Anthony. They have conversations from across the high/low art divide with the goal of being honest about what a life centering art - high or low - actually looks like.
In this episode it’s story time - Nick goes down the memory line of his “true Hollywood experience” complete with agents and writers’ rooms and making sizzles. Nick and Ema also talk about the NACAs (National Association for Campus Activities), something Ema never heard of before but which apparently launches some performance careers in the US. They talk about the beautiful netherworld of regional entertainment scenes and about the disappearance of the Hollywood middle-class, and do a little detour on the 80-year-old mime living behind a curtain who used to be Nick’s housemate.
Credits:
- Recorded in Prague, Czech Republic, in July 2023
- Featuring: Nicholas Anthony and Ema Katrovas
- Recorded and edited by Ema Katrovas
- Theme song is "Stars" by Janis Ian (performed by Ema Katrovas and mixed to sound like a bar)
Stuff we talk about:
- The NACAs (National Association for Campus Activities): https://www.naca.org/
- The regional talent agency Nick worked for: https://www.glberg.com/
- The Post Post Apocalypse (a FunnyOrDie series Nick starred in): http://www.nicholasanthony.com/blog/the-walking-dead/
- My Girlfriend’s a Doll (sizzle for Nick’s project): https://vimeo.com/175526344
- Unlikely Assassins (sizzle/pilot for Nick’s project): https://vimeo.com/269707372
Podcasts Links:
- 💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: https://artists-on-the-verge.com/
- 👀 Instagram: @artists_on_the_verge
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An Opera Singer and a Comedian Walk Into a Bar is a new segment of the Artists ont he Verge podcast. It features your host, opera-singer-turned-experimental-performer Ema Katrovas, talking to comedian-and-TV-writer turned-novelist Nicholas Anthony. They'll be having conversations from across the high/low art divide with the goal of being honest about what a life centring art - high or low - actually looks like. In this first episode, Nick and Ema end up talking about an artist’s education and the different forms it takes on the high and low part of the spectrum. They also talk about the fertile soil which was the open mic at Acme, a Minneapolis-based club where Nick did stand up for the first time, do a little detour on the matriarchs in Ema's family and living under communism, and talk about how sometimes it’s necessary to totally reinvent yourself - as Nick and Ema have both done, on some level.
Credits:
Recorded in Prague, Czech Republic, in July 2023
Featuring: Nicholas Anthony and Ema Katrovas
Recorded and edited by Ema Katrovas
Theme song is "Stars" by Janis Ian (performed by Ema Katrovas and mixed to sound like a bar)
Links to stuff mentioned in the conversation:
That Shia la Beouf "just do it" video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-sfG8BV8wU
Acme - the Minneapolis comedy club: https://acmecomedycompany.com/Steve Martin's band Steep Canyon Rangers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steep_Canyon_Rangers
Steve Martin, Born Standing Up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_Standing_Up
Patricia Hampl (the writer who traveled to communist Czechoslovakia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Hampl
Patricia Hampl’s “monodrama” which Ema performed in: https://schubert.org/event/spotlight-on-patricia-hampl-writing-my-way-into-music/
"Socialism with a human face": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_with_a_human_face
The experimental Artist Diploma Ema is doing: https://www.cnsmd-lyon.fr/fr-2/les-formations/un-cycle-professionnalisant
💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: www.artists-on-the-verge.com
👀 Instagram: @artists_on_the_verge
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Artists on the Verge is Back from break!
Here is a sneak-peak of a new segment, An Opera Singer and a Comedian Walk Into a Bar.
To follow the shorts/reels on YouTube or Instagram:
YouTube: @ArtistsontheVerge
Instagram: @artists_on_the_verge
💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/About the host ✌🏼: www.emakatrovas.com💌Newsletter (best way to stay in touch): https://mailchi.mp/45b402876641/artistsontheverge😇 Become a patron and gain access to "backstage" videos: https://steadyhq.com/en/opera-on-the-verge
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Watch video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/4O0W4A2l5ds
I learned the term "scriptlessness" recently and realized it's why I started the Artists on the Verge channel.
Source: David Graeber's /Bullshit Jobs/ which cites a a paper called "Unrequited Love: On Heartbreak, Anger, Guilt, Scriptlessness and Humiliation" (R. Baumeister, S. Wotman, A. Stillwell.)
💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/
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About the host ✌🏼: www.emakatrovas.com
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I was surprised to learn that it wasn’t until 2020 that the G20 held its first Cultural Ministerial Meeting to discuss the importance of the creative sector to the economy and it wasn’t until 2021 that they established the Cultural Working Group, the purpose of which is to address issues relating to the creative economy.
So, what I’m going to read to you today, is a report on the state of the creative industries which was written up for the first Cultural Working Group in 2021 by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
I have not been able to find any documents on what the three years of G20 discussions on the cultural sector have actually yielded, but will keep an eye on that!
Link to the full report: https://www.oecd.org/cfe/leed/OECD-G20-Culture-July-2021.pdf
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About the host ✌🏼: www.emakatrovas.com
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This is the second part of my reading “The Arts After Darwin: Does Art Have an Origin and Adaptive Function?”
In the first part of the essay, Ellen Dissanayake explained why she thinks it’s helpful to think of art as an adaptive function and lays out some of the existing hypotheses of how art may have helped us survive, in the Darwinian sense. However, she argues most of the existing hypothesis aren’t really general enough or are skewed by Western notions of what art is. In the second half of the paper, which I read to you in this episode, the author lays out her own hypothesis about the adaptive function of art, which she argues is more universal.
The author, Ellen Dissanayake, is best known for three books on art anthropology: What Is Art For? (1988), Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes from and Why (1992) and Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began (2000). I chose to read “Arts After Darwin”, which was published in 2008 as a chapter in a book called World Art Studies, not just because it’s a shorter, stand-alone, piece but also because it is general enough to serve as an introduction for someone, like me, who isn’t an anthropologist. It was also published after Dissanayake’s three main books on art anthropology, which means she had completed the bulk of her research into this subject by the time she wrote this – not to mention that recency is very important when considering academic writing, especially when there’s a scientific aspect to it.
You can read "Art After Darwin" yourself here: http://mail.ellendissanayake.com/publications/pdf/EllenDissanayake_ArtsAfterDarwinWAS08.pdf
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About the host ✌🏼: www.emakatrovas.com
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This is the first part of my reading “The Arts After Darwin: Does Art Have an Origin and Adaptive Function?”
The author, Ellen Dissanayake, is best known for three books on art anthropology: What Is Art For? (1988), Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes from and Why (1992) and Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began (2000). I chose to read “Arts After Darwin”, which was published in 2008 as a chapter in a book called World Art Studies, not just because it’s a shorter, stand-alone, piece but also because it is general enough to serve as an introduction for someone, like me, who isn’t an anthropologist. It was also published after Dissanayake’s three main books on art anthropology, which means she had completed the bulk of her research into this subject by the time she wrote this – not to mention that recency is very important when considering academic writing, especially when there’s a scientific aspect to it.
You can read "Art After Darwin" yourself here: http://mail.ellendissanayake.com/publications/pdf/EllenDissanayake_ArtsAfterDarwinWAS08.pdf
*I accidently called the paper an “essay” on the recording, which isn’t the right term for this kind of paper.
💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/
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About the host ✌🏼: www.emakatrovas.com
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An under-3-minute summary of the three-part essay "Another Artworld" which examines the fraught legacy of "high" art. Also - my take.
This is actually a video episode, though it can also just be listened to. You can find it on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/PaS0CWcMvEI
00:00 Intro 00:31 Summary of "Another Art World" - in less than 3 minutes 03:11 A Different Take on "Another Art World" --- How do you fund this? --- Art as Care --- High Art vs. Popular Art vs. Publicly-Funded Art... all have their issues --- The big question we have to answer before we can change anything! --- What helped me...
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About the host ✌🏼: www.emakatrovas.com
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This is my honest review of the colossal undertaking that was the TV opera Everything for Dawn by Experiments in Opera. The review was “commissioned by” Theorema Review, a recently-started multi-lingual journal in which artists review other artist.
Link to my review in Theorema Review: https://theorem-a.org/2023/06/21/everything-for-dawn-by-experiments-in-opera/
Link to Experiments in Opera’s Everything for Dawn: https://experimentsinopera.com/portfolio-item/everythingfordawn/
Live reaction to Everything for Dawn w/ Jim Osman:
Episode 1: https://youtu.be/1wP0aKjKfw0
Episode 2: https://youtu.be/Of3OzIDa43A
Episode 3: https://youtu.be/Vw_n4ydRlAE
Conversation with Jason Cady on Artists on the Verge: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/zYCdeKnuOAb
💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/
👀 Instagram: @artists_on_the_verge
About the host ✌🏼: www.emakatrovas.com
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We're finally here - at the third installment of reading "Another Art World" by Nika Dubrovsky and David Graeber. Even if you're a new listener, you can start here because in the last segment, the author's promised to finally get to the heart of the matter: What might "another art world" look like?
But – something happened between the last instalment of the essay, published in November 2019, and this installment from November 2020: the pandemic and the anti policing protests of the summer of 2020. Understandably, the authors felt they had to switch gears – so this installment of the essay spends quite some time drawing a parallel between the police state and the art world.
Link to the third installment of "Another Art World" in eFlux magazine: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/113/360192/another-art-world-part-3-policing-and-symbolic-order/
My interview with co-author Nika Dubrovsky: https://youtu.be/j9TyYRo0OQQ
Music: Dieter van der Westen: The Balkan Night Train
💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/
👀 Instagram: @artists_on_the_verge
About the host ✌🏼: www.emakatrovas.com
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This episode is a conversation with composer and Web III researcher (and internet sceptic!) Reilly Smethurst. Is it a pessimistic episode? I actually don't think so.
My take: The fact that the internet does not replace real-life communities and live gatherings around art, and hurts artists by creating global, algorithmically-moderated competition, is an empowering bit of knowledge which I hope inspires listeners to find ways to make art outside the internet and use the internet in smart ways to their advantage.
Reilly and I talk about the strange disbalance between the number of viable career paths for artists and the number of people studying creative disciplines, the absurdities of arts funding, the difference between the Dionysian and Apollonian approach to creating, artificial scarcity, how regulation may be the only answer to the excesses of the online arts market, and Reilly’s one actionable solution to the predicament posed by the internet, among other things.
All music in this episode by Reilly Smethurst:
Inheritance (2019)
Uterus (2016)
Organised (2019) Angel (2018)
During the interview, we mention the essay “Another Artworld” by Nika Dubrovsky and David Graeber. Here are some links:
My interview with Nika Dubrovsky: https://youtu.be/j9TyYRo0OQQ
Reacting to “Another Art World” Pt. 1: https://youtu.be/ufgK9PJszYY
Reacting to “Another Art World” Pt. 2: https://youtu.be/9QnxN425yyw
Timestamps (add 30 seconds to account for intro):
00:00 Intro
02:28 Arts careers on the decline but more people studying arts
08:32 The problem with electronic music and Reilly's "Apollonian reactionary phase"
20:00 Mocking the arts funding bodies
23:37 Web II and Web III - almost the same and both bad for artists + failures of Audius and OpenSea and the difference between music industry and art industry
40:57 Reilly's advice about how to face a world impacted by the internet
💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/
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About the host ✌🏼: www.emakatrovas.com
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No time to read academic essays? Well, have no fear, we'll read this one together. "Another Art World" by David Graeber and Nika Dubrovsky examines how we might re-imagine the art world.
Part II of "Another Art World" lays out a hypothesis about how post-industrial ideas of production as well as ideas imbedded in Western thought as far back as Greek myth, unfairly legitimize the existence of curators, art dealers, and art administrators, who safeguard the ONE rule that can’t be broken within the art establishment. If you want to know what that rule is, keep listening. Oh, and that faux “experimental,” “boundary-pushing” posture of contemporary art? They argue it’s not a bug but a feature, one that benefits those who most profit from art dealing.
Link to text of "Another Art World Pt. 1" in eFlux journal: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/104/298663/another-art-world-part-2-utopia-of-freedom-as-a-market-value/💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/👀 Instagram: @artists_on_the_vergeAbout the host ✌🏼: www.emakatrovas.com💌Newsletter (best way to stay in touch): https://mailchi.mp/45b402876641/artistsontheverge😇 Become a patron and gain access to "backstage" videos: https://steadyhq.com/en/opera-on-the-verge
David (aka Dev) Devereux's story is one of carving out a space of freedom online. A full-time sound engineer by profession, Dev is the founder of Tin Can Audio, a Glasgow-based audio fiction company which has become home to all the strange sounds and stories Dev wants to make.
Community is important to Dev’s story – from the community of wonderful voice actors and creators around Tin Can Audio to the online community, which Dev has engaged in interesting ways by opening up the creative process to the public (for example by making an entire audio fiction drama, from script writing to sound editing, live on Twitch.)
Dev and I talk about the origins of and funny stories from the series made under Tin Can Audio, about the more unexpected inspirations for stories from video games to music to popular TV shows, the idea of demystifying the creative process and showing audiences how things are made, and about how much time goes into making something that’s actually good, among other things.
This episode features music from Dev’s audio fiction (The Tower and Middle:Bellow, respectively) as well as excerpts from the audio fictions Tin Can, Middle:Bellow, The Tower, The Dungeons Economic Model, and Anamnesis featuring the voices of (in order of appearance):
David Devereux
Charlotte Ryder
David Pellow
Katrina Allen
Mark Gallie
Roger Best
Links :
https://daviddevereux.carrd.co/
https://www.tincanaudio.co.uk/
💋👁👂🏼 Artists on the Verge website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/👀 Instagram: @artists_on_the_vergeAbout the host ✌🏼: www.emakatrovas.com💌Newsletter (best way to stay in touch): https://mailchi.mp/45b402876641/artistsontheverge😇 Become a patron and gain access to "backstage" videos: https://steadyhq.com/en/opera-on-the-verge
No time to read academic essays? Well, have no fear, we'll read this one together. "Another Art World" by David Graeber and Nika Dubrovsky talks about how we might re-imagine the art world. In part one, they introduce the idea of the art world creating artificial scarcity and talk about how this has roots in Romanticism. They also touch on the Proletkult in early 20th century Russia, which was founded on the (Romantic?) idea that "everyone is an artist" and was one of the few real-life attempts to create art communism.
Link to text of "Another Art World Pt. 1" in eFlux journal: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/102/284624/another-art-world-part-1-art-communism-and-artificial-scarcity/💋👁👂🏼 Website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/👀 Instagram: @artists_on_the_verge 💌Newsletter (best way to stay in touch): https://mailchi.mp/45b402876641/artistsontheverge😇 Become a patron and gain access to "backstage" videos: https://steadyhq.com/en/opera-on-the-verge
In this conversation with director Vivian Säde and producer Eve Tisler we talk about a short film we’ve been working on (named Echo and created around the monodrama Sentiment by Juliana Hall and Caitlin Vincent) in order to talk openly about all the work that goes into any creative project, even when things never actually "click" to make the project to happen. We also talk about "women filmmakers," budgets, artists and mental health and how opera on film is gatekept, among other things.
YouTube version (with supplementary images): https://youtu.be/7nKWWPi-pWgA blog post talking more deeply about the EU grant escapade: https://soprano-on-the-verge.blogspot.com/2021/11/was-ist-kunst-on-bureaucracy-and-work.html
Contents (add 30 seconds to accommodate intro):
00:00:00 Intro00:00:18 The Logline 00:01:29 The First Two Years: From Test Shoot to EU Grant Escapade 00:09:28 New Beginnings: Teaming Up with Vivian 00:13:15 Eve Comes on as Producer 00:13:59 Choosing the Right Collaborators
00:16:27 A Detour with a Czech Producer
00:18:48 Women in the Film Industry 00:24:45 Echo: The Producer's Point of View
00:27:11 What IS a producer, anyway?
00:34:53 Our Estonian Experimental Film Fund Application
00:36:15 The Realities of Short Film Budgets and Paying Your Crew
00:41:21 Women Aging IN to the Film Industry
00:45:48 Artists and Mental Health 00:52:32 The Committee Evaluation of the Estonian Experimental Film Fund 00:58:36 The Particular Difficulty of Funding an Opera Film
01:02:52 Reinventing Opera, the Voice, and the point of making Echo 01:08:23 Final Thoughts (and a Final Plaint About the American Funding System) 💋👁👂🏼 Website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/
Nika Dubrovsky is an artist who believes everyone is an artist.
Originally from Russia, where, after an education in visual arts, she was involved with the cultural underground of the 80s, she immigrated to the United States in 1989, right after the communist regime fell. Interestingly, once in the US, Nika seemed to take up the same position she had under totalitarianism, in circles of cultural critics and activist.
One of Nika’s recent projects is the Museum of Care, the concept of which comes from an essay of the same name which she wrote with her late husband, David Graeber, during the pandemic of 2020. The essay imagines a world in which the office buildings left empty by lockdowns are turned into communal spaces, or Museums of Care, after the pandemic, the way royal palaces were turned into state museums after the French and Russian revolutions. The idea of art, and the place of art and the artist, are important to Nika Dubrovsky’s, and for that matter David Graeber’s, cultural critique, which is why I wanted to interview Nika for this podcast.
Nika and I talk about the underground art scene in Soviet Russia, the Proletkult, in which everyone is an artist, the idea of direct vs. indirect action, the creation of autonomous zones, like the Zapatista communities or Rozhava, and at the end I ask Nika three questions about her article, co-written with David Graeber, “Another Art World” which critiques art institutions as they exist today – among other things.
❤️ Time stamps (please add 30 seconds to account for the intro):
03:14 – Nika’s origins and Samizdat
06:27 – The Museum of Care
10:50 – “The Government is the Government, the State is the State” (and meeting David Graeber)
13:29 – Visual Assembly, the Role of the Artist, Proletkult and how Everyone is an Artist
20:02 – The War Against the Imagination
23:20 – Storytelling, Creative Refusal, Schizmogenesis
24:44 – Technology
26:39 – Extinction Rebellion and Direct vs. Indirect Action
30:50 – Taking direct action and autonomous zones
40:15 – The Mona Lisa and Its Value
42:09 – Three Questions About Another Art World
42:47 – A Summary of “Another Art World”
44:17 – Question 1: Isn’t the internet a social experiment in what happens when everyone can be a creator and, if so, why are there still winners and losers?
01:00:40 – Question 2: Even if everyone should have the access to the means of producing art, isn’t art also an act of service which requires expertise?
01:12:29 – Question 3: Why use the word “communism”?
👁 Links:
The Museum of Care website: https://museum.care/
The Museum of Care (article): https://davidgraeber.org/articles/the-museum-of-care-reimagining-the-world-after-pandemic/
David Graeber Institute: https://davidgraeber.org/
Another Art World (essay): https://www.e-flux.com/journal/102/284624/another-art-world-part-1-art-communism-and-artificial-scarcity/
💋👂🏼👁 Podcast website: onthevergetrilogy.com
In this Snippet, I debate myself-from-a-little-over-a-year-ago about the internet as it pertains to artists by re-reading and reacting to an article I wrote on Medium called “5 Ways The Internet is Failing You As An Artists – And 5 Things You Can Do About It.” I recorded this in the context of having done some interesting interviews lately but not having time to edit them just yet – so this is me feeding the beast of an online platform whilst complaining about the very mechanism that compels me to do so. The irony does not escape me.
Here is the original article:
https://medium.com/@ema.katrovas/5-ways-the-internet-is-failing-you-as-an-artist-1eec8b6e3bbb
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This is my reading an article I wrote for a newly-launched publication called Theorema Review (https://theorem-a.org/). I'm mainly reading it to draw attention to the idea behind the publication, launched a couple months ago by a friend, that of artists reviewing other artists (though I also used my review as an excuse to ponder experimental vocal music history and experimentation vs. communication in art.) Lots of John Cage and Cathy Berberian in the this one!
Link to the article (including footnotes and sources): https://theorem-a.org/2022/12/08/anaphora-by-michael-edward-edgerton/
During my reading I play Felicita Brusoni’s rendition of Michael Edward Edgerton’s Anaphora available in full here: https://youtu.be/dgkiWUgNEdA
This is the audio from the anniversary livestream I did on January 13th, 2023. I fixed some of the audio issues from the livestream so it's a bit easier to listen to.
You can also watch the original livestream here: https://youtu.be/gGUW5q1IIDI
Livestream schedule:
Vivian Säde (director and screenwriter, co-host) - 19:00 - 20:30 CET (1pm-2:30pm EST) 1
9:20 - 19:40 CET (1:20-1:40pm EST) - Jason Cady (composer, co-founder of Experiments in Opera) and Christoph Ogiermann (composer, improvisor)
19:50 - 20:10 CET (1:50-2:10pm EST): Elena Floris (violinist, actress at Odin Teatret) and Felicita Brusoni (vocal experimenter)
20:10 - 20:30 CET (2:10-2:30pm EST): Darja Lukjanenko (visual artist and communicator) and Helena Mamich (psychiatrist and singer)
Omar Shahryar (composer of music for and by children, co-host) - 20:30 - 21:20 CET (2:30-3:20pm EST)
20:40-21:00 CET (2:40-3pm EST): Kate Gale (writer, founder of Red Hen Press) and Richard Katrovas (writer, ex-poet, father of the host)
21:00 - 21:20 CET (3-3:20pm EST): Cassandra Kaczor (classical-composer-turned-pop-music-artist) and Deyiş Görgülü (singer of Ottoman music)
💋👁👂🏼 Website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/
👀 Instagram: @soprano_on_the_verge
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This is a Snippet in which I ask myself why it seems so hard to be original in the field of contemporary art/theater/music and possibly introduce you to the term “flameout,” coined by anthropologist David Graeber.
The snippet is also available with images/video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/h0eBr6l0BsM
Link to David Graeber’s lecture (very recommended): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCF-8OQj0RE
David Graeber’s website: https://davidgraeber.org/
The Institute for Experimental Art (co-founded by Graeber): https://theinstitute.info/
Full Artists on the Verge episode with composer Jason Cady (the one I quote at the end): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNOaqOmRl1w
❤️More about this podcast: onthevergetrilogy.com
❤️Instragram: @Soprano_on_the_verge
Deyiş Görgülü was 9 years old when she swore off music. She was 30 when she decided to take it up again. So, what makes someone refuse music for 20 years?
Deyiş grew up in Turkey as part of the Alevi Bektashi community. In fact, her name, Deyiş, is the name for a type of Alevi spiritual music. But, in the mid-90s, as a child, she lived through one of the flareups of the Kurdish-Turkish conflict. The tension surrounding this conflict, which started way back in the early 70s, meant that her father, a trumpetist for the Turkish army, forbid her from singing Alevi songs, since Alevi culture is fundamentally pacifist and therefore anti-military. It wasn’t until she moved to France, as an adult, that she felt she could sing again and, eventually, founded an ensemble called Evden with viola d’amore player Isabelle Eder and flautist Marie Ploquin. They perform a kind of fusion between European classical music and Ottoman music – and just to give you an idea of the vastness of Ottoman music, Deyiş sings in Ladino, Turkish, Greek, Assyrian, Armenian, and Arabic among other languages.
Deyiş and I talk about Alevi culture and the cem gathering, which Deyiş likens a to jam session, about the vast world of Ottoman music, about the meaning of the word Evden, the name of her ensemble, about a song Deyiş is writing for the women of Iran, and about one problem shared by music and baklava, among other things.
Evden’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/evdenmusique/
Musique:
Evden Musique - Yeniliğe Doğru (text by Rumi) (live): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0TnNth-1tM
Erdal Erzincan - Bugün Bize Pir Geldi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24Yfvj6e0t0
Evden Musique - Evden Musique - Στο ’πα και στο ξαναλέω (Sto 'pa Kai Sto Ksanaleo): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTriUPjSQQk
Madness. It’s a popular literary and operatic themes, but seldom would you get to talk to an artist who is trained to cure madness.
Helena Mamich leads a double life: she is both a doctor at a psychiatric ward in Berlin and a soprano spatializing in classical contemporary music. As a singer, Helena has achieved enough even for someone who doesn’t have a parallel life as a doctor– she has premiered numerous works by contemporary composers, recently debuted in a new opera at the Bethanien Theater in Berlin, collaborated with the German band Black Needle noise on a crossover track, and in the year 2019 she won the Večernjakova Domovnica prize awarded annually by the Večerjni list daily newspaper for the most successful musician of the Croatian diaspora and as if that wasn’t enough, Helena has recently published a book of political haikus in her native Croatian. One of Helena’s big missions is to educate the public about psychiatry and one of the ways she would like to do that is through a short opera based on her experiences as a psychiatrist (she’s already written the libretto.)
Helena and I talk about how psychiatry and classical contemporary music complement each other, how important understanding someone’s culture is in determining whether they have a psychiatric condition, how every discharge letter from a psychiatric ward could be a libretto, as well as one thing Helena says should be taught in conservatories but isn’t.
Helena’s website and blog: https://helenamamic.com/
Helena’s Instagram: @helenamamich
Music (all music on this episode is interpreted by Helena Mamich):
G.Scelsi -Lilitu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIUhF7EOMxs
Black Needle Noise: https://soundcloud.com/doctordiva/just-one-more-day-nocturnal-vocalise
Gerhard Stäbler: blindflug: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GyY7ub_TYU&t=69s
Ivana Lang: Macji pir (Cat's wedding): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p-GdFrgJjw
💋👁👂🏼 Website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/
Meet Felicita Brusoni, Italian singer and voice researcher. Felicita is pursuing a doctorate at Malmö Academy of Music is Sweden (part of Lund University) where she is working on a project called “A Voice Beyond the Edge.” One of her main mentors is composer Michael Edgerton, author of The 21st Century Voice: Contemporary and Traditional Extra Normal Voice which is a catalog of vocal sounds that often comes up in conversations about extended vocal techniques.
As the name of Felicita’s artistic research project implies, this is definitely going to be an episode for voice geeks but also for those who like the bizarre. Felicita and I talk about the inaccuracy of the term “extended vocal techniques,” about the somewhat hard-to-define but increasingly popular discipline of “artistic research,” about the difference between extended techniques in the mid-20th century and today, about Felicita’s fresh discovery that humans can produce ultrasounds, but also about singers Cathy Berberian and even Maria Callas and, at the end, Felicita even tries to teach me an extended technique I hadn’t done before – to mixed results.
Felicita’s website: https://www.felicitabrusoni.com/
Felicita’s Instagram: @felicitabrusoni_soprano
🎵 Music:
Felicita Brusoni sings Vinko Globukar’s Jehnseits der Sicherheit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5AyEU4mpBk&t=297s
Felicita Brusoni sings Michael Edgerton’s Anaphora: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgkiWUgNEdA&t=344s
Cathy Berberian sings Luciano Berio‘s Folk Songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiRgEFotRxM
Cathy Berberian sings Luciano Berio’s Sequenza III: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hxjCIANddU
Maria Callas and Tito Gobbi in murder scene from Tosca: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnFlg1z1hPc
For more about Artists on the Verge:
💋👁👂🏼 Website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/
Insta: @Soprano_on_the_verge
To see images pertaining to this episode (including Darja's social sculpture End of the World Bread) you can watch the YouTube version: https://youtu.be/x3mV2gaGj-4
Darja Lukjanenko is a Ukrainian visual art student based in Prague, Czech Republic, who, since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, started giving lectures about Ukrainian art to the public to amend what she perceived as a pervasive ignorance about Ukrainian heritage and the sovereignty of its art.
During our interview, Darja and I sat next to her “social sculpture” called End of the World Bread. It’s a table with a white tablecloth and on it some six loaves of bread. The soil baked into the bread was collected in Kiev by another Ukrainian artist, Bohdana Zaiats, on the first days of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Darja and I talk about bread as a universal symbol of home, an open letter Darja wrote to a major Czech arts organization since the beginning of the war, the potentially problematic use of the word “decolonize” in the context of post-Soviet countries, and the artists social responsibility, among other things.
Darja’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/darjalukjanenko
Music for this episode is by Sasha Lukjanenko, from Darja’s project called Lullaby for Plevel: https://vimeo.com/476913174
More about this podcast: onthevergetrilogy.com
Whenever I pitch the Artists on the Verge podcast, I’m forced to use the term “indie artist” because I can’t seem to find another shorthand for the kinds of artists I’m speaking to. It's a term which isn't perfect and does have some baggage, so here I explain what I mean by it and why I think it's particularly important to talk about this kind of artist, now.
🎥 This Snippet is also available as a kind of video essay on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/Unhh2ENsOhU
For more about this podcast and related blog and YouTube channel visit onthevergetrilogy.com.
Follow on instagram at @soprano_on_the_verge
Vivian Säde is a twenty-four-year-old Estonian/intercontinental filmmaker in the very beginning of her career. I was connected with her by another guest to this podcast, Malena Dayen (whom you can hear in episode 4), when I was looking for someone to work with on a short film. I found that Vivian’s sensibility, unpretentiously influenced by pop culture, is a perfect counterbalance to a potentially overly-serious short musical film written around a monodrama for unaccompanied soprano by contemporary American composer Juliana Hall and text by Caitlin Vincent.
Vivian and I talk about the difficulty of breaking into filmmaking, about walking the line between popular entertainment and high art, about the Americanization of storytelling, and about our joint film project and how it ties into issues of feminine identity in the public eye, among other things.
Vivian's website: https://vivianfilms.com/
This is the first episode on which I used music from the Free Music Archive. The piece in this episode is by Monplaisir, called "Lid" from the album Kitchen Table: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Monplaisir/
💋👁👂🏼 Website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/
This is my review of a very prescient book which aligns with the concerns of this podcast: William Deresiewicz's The Death of the Artist: How Creators are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech (2020). I share one central insight of the book and also some notes I have as a European-based artist with a theater background. If I get just one person to read this book, I'll be happy! Here's a link: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250125514/thedeathoftheartist
More about this podcast and the related blog and YouTube channel at onthevergetrilogy.com
Find me on Instagram @soprano_on_the_verge
This is a "snippet" episode in which I briefly expand on a theme relating to the Artists on the Verge podcast. For more about this podcast and related blog and YouTube channel visit onthevergetrilogy.com. Follow on instagram at @soprano_on_the_verge
Learn more about the Artists on the Verge podcast and the related blog and YouTube channel at onthevergetrilogy.com
Follow on Instagram @soprano_on_the_verge
Daniil Posazhenikov is a young Russian composer, curator, performer and improviser who, over the past five years, has participated in gathering what he calls a kind of theater production company consisting of young Russian artists from various disciplines. The troupe’s name is Geometry of Sound and they have so far managed to put on about five productions a year in Russia. Their output is hard to pin down, but falls within the experimental and performance-art category and is often site-specific.
I was connected with Daniil by another Russian artist who told me in a private message that she is embarrassed by her country and this made me reconsider the question which everyone seems to be grappling with, these days: Should the individual, even the individual artist, be held responsible for the politics or economics of the country they live in? We touch on in this question in our conversation with Daniil.
Daniil and I talk about the need to connect with audiences, whether experimentation belongs in the education system, how indie performance art can fly under the radar of censorship, and what it means not to be needed by the system you are part of, among other things.
Daniil's online profile: https://www.ulysses-network.eu/profiles/individual/28621/
More about Geometry of Sound (English version doesn't exist but you can use an online translator from Russian) : https://geozvuka.super.site/
🎵Music (Composer: Daniil Posazhennikov):
Nostalgia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zXqayqgKhc
Figaro Rave (theater music): https://soundcloud.com/posazhennikov/figaro-rave-new?utm_source=clipboard&utm_campaign=wtshare&utm_medium=widget&utm_content=https%253A%252F%252Fsoundcloud.com%252Fposazhennikov%252Ffigaro-rave-new
G:Grammar: no online recording available
Mirror (ballet music): https://soundcloud.com/posazhennikov/9-1m?utm_source=clipboard&utm_campaign=wtshare&utm_medium=widget&utm_content=https%253A%252F%252Fsoundcloud.com%252Fposazhennikov%252F9-1m
Richard Katrovas (a.k.a. my father) is the luckiest person I know: He grew up in cars, the eldest son of a criminal who bounced checks while lugging his family of seven across the United States. They lived from motel to motel and car to car, fleeing from the police, which meant my father and his four younger siblings missed much of elementary school. The two times his father was in prison, the rest of the family lived with his mother on welfare in public housing. Long story short (and I describe his circuitous life path more in the intro) he became a poet, later an "ex-poet," and a creative writing professor, as well as co-founder of the Prague Summer Program for Writers, which sprouted from the 1990s American expat community in Prague, Czech Republic.
I interviewed my father more or less on a whim, a day before he left to return from Prague to the US, after visiting my sisters and me for the holidays this past December. I didn’t necessarily plan to edit our conversation into an episode of this podcast, because I wasn’t sure If my father really fits what I would think of as an “indie” artist but what I realized is that our conversation is one about myths – personal myths, historical myths, cultural myths. My father’s story can be framed as a manifestation of the American dream or it can be understood, as my father has come to understand it, as a story of how lucky it was to be white in 1950s and 60s America. The format of this podcast, in which I ask artists to “sing a song of themselves,” to paraphrase Walt Whitman, really emerges from my growing up with my father's storytelling and self-mythologizing, and so his voice really does belong in the Artists on the Verge series.
I should also add that I was editing our conversation after Russia invaded Ukraine this February, and this loomed over our conversation, in retrospect, in the sense of how much we talk about the way history plays out in the lives of individuals.
Richard Katrovas' website: www.richardkatrovas.com
More about this podcast: 💋👁👂🏼: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/
Violinist Elena Flores has been Musical Director of the legendary Odin Teatret since 2015, and became assistant director of the theater four years ago. The core of her creative philosophy is “discipline,” a word she said many times during our interview. She is also a self-described “rock star” who spent much of her career as a violinist in popular ensembles like Nidi D'arac. Elena has now spent half her career as an actor in the Odin Teatret ensemble and so her journey is also one of remaining open to the unexpected opportunities that present themselves, even when they are perpetuated by tragedy like, in Elena’s case, a devastating earthquake.
Elena and I talk about, among other things, the discipline necessary to become (and stay) an artist, how the institution of classical music might be brought into the 21st century, and how, after initial resistance, Elena began to see theater as a kind of musical composition.
Odin Teatret website: https://odinteatret.dk/
🎵Music:
Brahms' Violin Concerto in D Major: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKsMjp1X-vc
Nidi D'Arac, Pizzica: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCjHzAVSoxQ
Nidi D'Arac, Ipocharia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DezHm-yPc9o
💋👁👂🏼 Podcast website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/
Miro Tóth is a Prague-based Slovak composer, improvisor, and saxophonist who effortlessly moves between genres. He recently premiered his composition Black Angels Songs, Book 1, commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, inspired by the famous George Crumb piece. He created (among other music theater works) a series of operas called Trilogy of the Rod in which a rod – an actual stick - becomes a kind of monolith vested with the absurd power of public officials. He’s also known as a film composer. On the other hand, he stood at the founding of an improvisation scene in Slovakia some fifteen years ago and has performed as a saxophone and vocal improvisor, in genres from jazz to free improvisation, across Central Europe. He is a tireless ensemble-founder – from our conversation I counted about five different ensembles he founded, focused on a range of different genres.
Miro was nice enough to speak English for most of the interview but we switch to Czech and Slovak in the last third of the interview, which is also when the most interesting conversation happens. I try dub over this to convey our conversation - for anglophone people it’s a kind of peek into a foreign culture and language.
Miro and I talk about how you must think of yourself as “nobody” in order to do your best work, the absurd power of public officials, the Czech new music scene, the Ostrava New Music Days festival without which the Czech New Music Scene wouldn’t be what it is, the cultural differences between Czechs and Slovaks, and the permeability of music genres, among other things.
Miro's website: https://miro2toth.wixsite.com/home/bio
Music in this episode:
Black Angels Songs, Book 1 (Dystopic Requiem Quartet): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_01mC57j0sA
"Uprostred tmy," Drť band: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJf265-LzUk
Improv w/ Toth/Mazur/Dymny, a Polish-Slovakian trio which forms part of the NewEast project establishing an improv scene in the former Soviet Block : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf26CnMbLfw
💋👁👂🏼 Website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/
Mike Miller and I met on our first day of undergraduate music studies when we were both 18. Mike studied voice, as a countertenor, and, later, organ. When I found out, years after we both graduated, that he had become a protestant pastor in Texas, I was puzzled, at first – he was openly gay and I had heard him complain about his conservative relatives who used the Bible to condemn who he was. But then I realized - Mike had never condemned Christianity or God or religion as such – his complaints centered around how selectively people read the Bible. And, talking to him about his life as a pastor, I realized there are many parallels between what he does as a spiritual guide, and the function that artists might have as cultural guides.
Mike and I talk about the unpredictable life of a pastor, mistranslations of the Bible, myths about Christmas, and how creating things is one of the bests paths towards greater spirituality, among other things.
Mike's blog: https://gaybythegraceofgod.com/
💋👁👂🏼 Website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/
Jim Osman is a 25-year-old theater and opera director based in the UK who has already directed a range of interesting projects across mediums and genres - like a sci-fi opera and a fantasy-puppet-satire short movie. He also produced and directed a monthly surreal comedy and puppetry night at Cairo, Brixton, made a video essay about cyberpunk opera for the Cyberpunk Research Network, and had a 1-1 12-week intensive with Daniel Kramer, former artistic director of English National Opera, who supposedly called him one of the most interesting young director he’s worked with. He is currently earning a Masters in opera directing from Royal Welsh College of Music.
Jim and I talk about the commodification of spirituality and identity, sci-fi as the modern-day fairytale and as a device to better talk about divisive issues, Terry Pratchett as pan-paganism, the problematic union of capitalism and technology, and the future of theater, among other things.
Jim's video essay on cyberpunk opera: http://cyberpunkculture.com/1st-cyrn-workshop-cyberpunk-music/%C2%A73-jim-osman/
Music:
Motherload (sci-fi opera produced at Tete a Tete theater), text by Susan Gray and soundscape by Liam Noonan, sopranos: Natasha Agarwal and Julieth Lozano: https://vimeo.com/608895790
💋👁👂🏼 Website: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/
Kate Gale is a poet, prose writer, librettist, president of the American Composers Forum, and founder of Red Hen Press, a Los Angeles-based independent literary publishing house, one of the foremost of its kind in the US. Her story is both all-American and quite unusual: It involves escaping a cult, going to college just to spite a conservative boyfriend, and becoming a divorced mom who decided to transform Los Angeles into a literary city. The result was Red Hen Press, named after the American fable about the Little Red Hen who sowed her own wheat to make her own bread.
Kate and I talk about the healing power of storytelling, how a manuscript goes from being one of thousands submissions to being published, how stories aren’t always enough, the taboos around money, the insight manuscript submissions give into the collective psyche, and why e-Books aren’t replacing print books any time soon, among other things.
Website of Red Hen Press: https://redhen.org/
🎵Music:
Moses Concas harmonica beatbox
Nina Simone, "Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood"
Sonny Boy Williamson harmonica solo
Iain Farrington, piano arrangement of ABBA's "Money"
Marina Lebenson, piano improvisation on "If I Were a Rich Man" from Fiddler on the Roof
Mark Abel (w/ text by Kate Gale), "Those Who Loved Medusa"
💋👁👂🏼 More about this podcast and related blog and YouTube channel: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/
Christoph Ogiermann is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improvisor based in Bremen, Germany. He is founder of Klank, a quartet of musicians who improvise on everything from their instruments to cardboard boxes or balloons.
We talk about feeling like an outsider, the ballet of improvising on piano, the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of German arts funding and also how well supported many German artists are, building one’s music career around making opportunities for others, and playing on boxes, among other things.
🎵Music:
Schubert's Symphony No. 8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWnKMzAedK4
Malcolm Goldstein, Vision Soundings, "From Center of Rainbow": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBbiVI8IkeI
Klank improvisations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogXwSwrf-6A
TOCH M for feedbacking Voice Transformer (Ogiermann): https://soundcloud.com/ogiermann/toch-m-for-feedbacking-voice-transformer
Cheryl Ong & Vivian Wang, "Singaporous": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8qYF70FlZw
Klank website: https://www.klank.cc/en/
💋👁👂🏼 For moe about this podcast: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/
Olivia Fuchs is an opera director with roots in indie theater. Her story involves founding her own experimental theater company in London, a burned down performance space, and the UK tradition of performing above pubs. Recently, Olivia has been working on environmental activism, which she hopes to incorporate into her work in theater. Olivia and I spoke about techniques to approaching theater directing, how almost any story can be feminist, the advantages of growing up bicultural, Margaret Thatcher’s unexpected help in starting a small theater company, and, of course, finding ways to make ecologically-conscious, sustainable theater.
Olivia’s website: https://www.olivia-fuchs.com/
Music:
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson sings Dido’s lament
Excerpts from Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen
More about this podcast: onthevergetrilogy.com
Cassandra Kaczor is a classically trained pianist and composer whose dream was to make a living performing pop music. She’s also the first composer whose work I premiered back when we were both in undergrad. We talk about millennial angst, our fraught experiences with music education, the greed of American colleges, standing up for yourself as a freelance musician, and the coolness of nuns, among other things.
Cassandra's website: http://www.cassandrakaczormusic.com/
🎵Music:
"Rigid, Fluid" by Cassandra Kaczor
"Animal" by Cassandra Kaczor
Excerpt of Cassandra's high school musical, Deadlines
Jennifer Higdon, "Zaka"
"Sam's Song No. 1: Hi" by Cassandra Kaczor
"The Goldfish Forgets" by Cassandra Kaczor
💋👁👂🏼 For more about this podcast: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/
Reginald Edmund is a Chicago-based playwright and founder and managing curating producer of Black Lives Black Words, an activist theater organisation which "commissions, develops and produces bold and unapologetic artistic responses to current social and political issues." Since its inception in 2015, Black Lives Black words has served two continents, three countries, nine cities and counting. Reggie and I talk, among other things, about the artist as griot, the changing nature of the idea of "community" in a globalized world, the importance of live performance, and what it means for an artist to be, in Nina Simone's words, "with the times."
Website of Black Lives, Black Words: www.blacklivesblackwords.org
Music:
Nina Simone, "Good Bait"
Nina Simone, "You'll Never Walk Alone"
Nina Simone, "I've got life"
💋👁👂🏼 For more about this podcast: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/
Jason Cady is a New-York-based composer, librettist, pedal steel guitar and modular synthesizer player, and co-founder and co-artistic director of Experiments in Opera. We talk about following one’s musical curiosity, the definition of opera, music and storytelling, leaving the 20th century avant-garde behind, and how when “everything goes” in art, we might as well make it fun.
Jason's website: jasoncadymusic.com
🎵 Music:
Herbie Hancock, "Rockit"
Jason Cady, The Sounds of San Donato: Radio Symphony Orchestra
Jason Cady, Three Quintets
Generation X, "Your Generation"
Gene Krupa, compilation
Ornette Coleman, Free Jazz
Arnold Schönberg, "Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte"
Richard Lerman, Concert Version
Harold Budd, "The Real Dream of Sails"
Anthony Braxton, Trillium (opera)
Glenn Branca, Symphony 13 (Hallucination City)
Jason Cady, I Screwed Up the Future (opera)
Jason Cady, Buick City 1 a.m (trailer + song "The Same Answer for Every Question")
Jason Cady, Nostalgia Kills You (opera)
Jason Cady, Happiness is the Problem
Jason Cady, "I Could Not Allow That To Stand"
Jason Cady, Candy Corn (opera)
Monteverdi, Ritorno di Ulisse in Patria (opera)
Jason Cady, Another One Bites (podcast opera, part of Aqua Net & Funyuns)
And finally:
💋👁👂🏼 For more about this podcast: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/
Malena Dayen is a versatile vocalist and exciting opera director who works a lot with new media. Recently, Malena directed the first opera in virtual reality (The Presence of Odradek with Bare Opera.) She is also a versatile vocalist who sings both “standard” operatic repertoire and, most prominently with her duo New Airs Tango, Spanish music and tango. She is also part of the vocal improvisation ensemble Moving Star based at Carnegie Hall and a collaborative artist at the Weill Music Institute, among other performance engagements.
Malena and I talk about virtual reality, how technology changes singing, the magical elements of opera, and the so-far still irreplicable qualities of live performance, among other things.
Links:
Malena's website: https://www.malenadayen.com/
The Presence of Odradek at Bare Opera: http://www.bareopera.org/the-presence-of-odradek
Moving Star ensemble: http://www.movingstarvoices.com/
Malena's upcoming projects🔮:
With Teatro Grattacielo (grattacielo.org): Idomeneo July 2021 (Crete, Greece), L’Amico Fritz November 2021, El Amor Brujo November 2021 (New York City)
With Fairfield County Chorale (https://fairfieldcountychorale.org/): Vivaldi’s Gloria, April 2021
The Late Walk, at the Library of Congress. More info here: http://www.bareopera.org/decameron
Stay fully up-to-date on Malena's website!
Music on this episode:
Malena Dayen sings Blizzard Voices by Paul Moravec
New Airs Tango, Nostalgia
Moving Star improvisation
New Airs Tango, Cielito lindo
💋👁👂🏼 For more about this podcast: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/
Miriam Gordon-Stewart is both a world class soprano and co-founder and artistic director of Victory Hall Opera, an artist-led opera troupe in Charlottesville, Virginia. While still an active soloist, she and two other singers turned away from what she calls the "arena" (i.e. the opera industry) to embark on what she calls the "frontier" (i.e. the world of independent creation). Miriam and I talk about the freedom and hard work of the opera frontier, about the stage magic that happens when singers get to lead, about the advantages, both personal and artistic, of having a close-knit performance troupe, and about upcoming projects, which include Unsung, a film that takes a raw look at the lives of opera singers and includes footage and music from Victory Hall Opera’s recording of La Traviata. It premieres online this February, 20201 - see link below for tickets!
Links:
Miriam Gordon-Stewart's website: www.miriamgordon.com
Victory Hall Opera's Website: www.victoryhallopera.org
Trailer for upcoming opera Fat Pig
Trailer for Unsung
Get virtual tickets for Unsung: https://victoryhallopera.ticketspice.com/unsung
🎵 Music:
Miriam Gordon-Stewart sings Berg's Wozzeck (Act 3 Scene 1)
Miriam Gordon-Stewart sings Barber's /Knoxville, Summer of 1915
Overture to Verdi's La Traviata
💋👁👂🏼 For more about this podcast: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/
Julia Mintzer is one of those artists who has been able to cultivate a dual career in more ways than one: first, she is both a performer and director. Second, she has worked on the "industry" side of opera as well as on "indie" projects. Julia and I talked about some of her directorial projects, about giving depth to two-dimensional operatic characters (especially soprano ones), performing in art galleries, her direction of the first fully-staged opera in London after the beginning of the pandemic, and the difference between directing for the stage and for video - among other things.
Julia Mintzer's website: http://www.juliamintzer.com/
Music:
"Si vuol di francia il rege" from Maria Stuarda (Donizetti) and prelude to Der Tod und das Mädchen (Schubert): http://www.juliamintzer.com/audio
Excerpt from /Bread and Circuses: The Wrestling Opera/: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAuBPpTRZ1M
La Bohème at Mass Opera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=datdy5oPEiE
Carmen instrumentals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCrKncOpE7Q
Dana Varga's research into gender disparity in opera: https://theempoweredmusician.com/supply-and-demand-gender-disparity-in-opera-part-1/
💋👁👂🏼 For more about this podcast: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/
Omar Shahryar calls himself a composer, facilitator and peace-maker. We talk about the meaning and importance of an education in the arts, letting go of the perfection and expectations drilled into academically-trained artists, re-thinking the idea of an audience and – don’t worry – we also talk about getting that all-important funding for indie projects.
Links:
Omar's website: http://omarshahryar.info/
Opera Schmopera's website: http://www.operaschmopera.co.uk/
Channel 4 News report on the children's opera Shoe Full of Stars: https://www.channel4.com/news/students-stage-opera-about-terrorism-threat
Music on this episode:
NELV collective: "Trust the Person": https://soundcloud.com/user-126957820/trust-the-person
Excerpts from the children's opera A Shoe Full of Stars
(Words by Ed Harris
Music by Omar Shahryar and students from North Huddersfield Trust School
Ensemble: Dark Inventions
Conducted by Christopher Leedham
Soprano: Lizzie Holmes
Baritone: Neil Balfour)
All 4 minutes of our improv are available to patrons of the On the Verge Series! You can sign up for a free trial here: https://steadyhq.com/en/opera-on-the-verge
💋👁👂🏼 For more about this podcast: https://onthevergetrilogy.com/