Rebecca Lazier adapts Frederic Rzewski’s Attica-related compositions into an immersive, site-specific work at Invisible Dog
The Invisible Dog
51 Bergen St. between Smith & Court Sts.
June 13-15, $20
www.theinvisibledog.org
www.rebeccalazier.com
In 1971, pianist Frederic Rzewski composed a pair of minimalist works inspired by the Attica prison riots in upstate New York, which left more than three dozen people dead and forever changed the public’s view of the treatment of prisoners. Nova Scotia native Rebecca Lazier has used the two pieces — “Coming Together,” which features the slowly repeated sentence “Attica is in front of me,” spoken by a survivor of the riots who had been asked “How does it feel to have Attica behind you?,” and “Attica,” with words taken from a letter written by inmate Sam Melville, who died during the uprising — to create the site-specific Coming Together / Attica, running at the Invisible Dog in Brooklyn June 13-15. The U.S. premiere will be performed by Rashaun Mitchell, Silas Riener, Asli Bulbul, Jennifer Lafferty, Pierre Guilbault, and Christopher Ralph, with Mellissa Hughes as vocal soloist and live music by Newspeak, conducted by David T. Little for eight instruments. The fifty-minute show takes place on the third floor of the art space, set across four thousand square feet, with lighting design by Davison Scandrett and prison-related costumes by Mary-Jo Mecca. Lazier’s piece is divided into three sections: “Coming Together,” “The Quiet,” and “Attica,” combining music, movement, and text to explore isolation, oppression, memory, and adversity in an immersive presentation that, at one point, switches the relationship between audience and performer, playing with the idea of who is being held captive by whom.