Katorga

June, 2014

Location

Incubator Arts Project

Summary

KATORGA revolves around the experiences of a woman exiled to OZET’s prison colony for revolutionary activities in the turgid, early days of the Fifteenth Generation. Electronic and acoustic music, spoken and sung text, gestural choreography, and an immersive environment all combine to vivify a richly imagined world where prisoners labor in dimly lit mushroom fields as wardens struggle to communicate with the givers of the law, and somewhere on the outskirts a hundred-year-old hermit is setting out tea for his missing son.

Working Materials

Katorga Holiday Hymn Score

Katorga Score

Katorga Libretto

Videos

Katorga Retraction Film

For 12 days a year the OZET shuts down in order to allocate energy to the retraction of the Katorga, docking, deposit of mushrooms and prisoners, and the final release back out.

Katorga Retraction Holiday

11 hours.

long night / long song / mark the hours come and gone / cow in the gray barn /child in the hayloft

An Introduction to the Katorga Images

There is general agreement that the death of THE WOMAN precipitated the prison reform movement of the early Fifteenth Generation and the eventual closure of the Katorga prison colony.

OZET Katorga: Past 2 (The Group)

A sketch film for Katorga Section 3.

OZET: Katorga [section 2]

PIONEER: The council sent the call to cut away the hill gouge iron from the cliff to forge into a chain to coil inside a cave like entrails of a calf.

OZET: Katorga [section 1]

WARDEN: What beauty behind us. Silver eyeball, see us and turn. Forget everything all you won.

OZET: Katorga [section 4c]

WARDEN: Take your harvest to the scale. Look around! Who can speak for her Cousins? You! To the scale! Now!

OZET: Katorga [section 7 & 8]

As for me, she said, I shall be quite satisfied to leave a world where action is never sister of the dream.

Katorga: section 6

An OZET film directed by Jayce Bartok. It is based on the June 2014 stage production Katorga. It stars Becky Baumwoll and Stuart Rudin.

Performers

Becky Baumwoll: acting
Daniel Baker: voice, chimes
Scott Blumenthal: guitar
Brendan Dougherty: drums, electronics
Paula Matthusen: live vocal processing
Aaron Meicht: trumpet, keyboards, electronics
Matt Mitchell: piano, keyboards, electronics

Designers / Crew

Britt Plunkett: set
Thomas Dunn: lights
Kathleen Geldard: costumes
Dan Scully: video
Broken Chord: sound Jesse Perez: performance consultant

Press

“Bidding Farewell to a Home of Visionary Art with Space Travel and a Vodka Shot”, The New York Times, June 25, 2013

“Katorga: An Ozet Performance”, Time Out New York, June 26, 2014