“Singing quietly is the hardest thing to do. It takes a lot of energy,” singer and composer Heather Christian recently told a singer during rehearsals for her new show, “Terce: A Practical Breviary.” It is a technical note of a particularly intimate part of the work, a vocal work inspired by a one-hour mass for 31 singers that Christians thought and wrote around the concept of the divine feminine. did.
But having experienced the immersive glory of “Terce” at Brooklyn's Irondale Space, where it runs through Feb. 4, I found that the difficulty of singing quietly is an appropriate expression for “Terce” and Christian's work. I realized that. Common examples include “Oratorio for All Living Things” and “Animal Wisdom.” None of these works progress quietly. The full dynamic range is expressed, from whispers to screams. But Christian handcrafts music that makes the performing arts space pulse with an extraordinary humanity, forcing you to bend down to hear the proverbial still small voice.
“Terce” doesn’t feel that far removed from a worship experience. At least, that's what an ideal worship experience would look like.
It doesn't feel that far from a worship experience—at least, what an ideal worship experience would be like. In “Terce,” an unamplified chorus of women in choir uniforms of the denim-based variety moves in formation around a two-story space, a former Presbyterian Sunday school, and sings of individual and collective voices. Singing around and in front of us in a defenseless mix. sound. A transparent projector displays the dense and suggestive combination of Scripture and poetry that constitutes the Christian interpretation of the Mass. Singing along is not encouraged, but you are welcome to join in the gentle tapping that closes the song with a quiet fade-out at the end. .
A Christian who not only grew up Catholic, but also served as a cantor in Catholic church services from his youth to his early 30s, approaches this material with a degree of authority as well as a mixture of respectful and skeptical inquiry. It is working. When I spoke to her recently about the creation and meaning of her “Terce,” she first said that she grew up in the South, both in Natchez, Mississippi, and New Orleans, where Catholicism melds African and Haitian traditions and ghosts. We started talking about it. Virtually authentic. It was the kind of place where the owner of a local bowling and music hotspot had a shrine to Mary in his back room, which led Christian to say these surprising words, she said: Told. Service at Rock'n Bowl. ”
This explains a lot about how she came to create works that effortlessly weave together religious form and content of secular concerns. But that doesn't fully explain the impulse behind “Terce.” As Christian expressed it, this work was born out of a questioning of her faith traditions.
“It stemmed from feeling alienated by creators who didn't understand how women function socially in the world and the challenges that come with that,” she said. Articulating a common critique of patriarchal Christianity, whether or not especially when associated with the cult of the Virgin, we are drawn to the wildness, fertility, grace, and nature of women. “I feel like all these ideas about harmony with the early church were incorporated and focused on.” It's about how to tame those things, take control of creation, the earth, govern people, and subjugate the female wild. ”
The theater is one of the places where both performers and audiences can still collectively search.
This brings her to the literature and history of Goddess culture, as well as the writings of the 12th-century mystic Julian of Norwich, who is best known for being the first to articulate the image of God as a mother in the Western Christian tradition. I started looking into it. Other inspirations for “Terse” include popular 14th century saint Hildegard von Bingen and Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Potawatomi elder and author of “Terse.” weave sweetgrassThe book states that Christians are “about seeing eye to eye with nature and the gift economy with both humans and nature.”
Christian confessed that he now considers himself neither a believer nor an atheist, but a “cynic” in the general sense of the word and in the Greek philosophical tradition of countercultural asceticism. She said her “active deep search for God's guidance” still informs her own work. She says that's what she needs, and that's what the church is missing.
“When I go back to the Catholic Church, I feel like the questions are not proactive. I feel like we're doing it because this is what we're doing,” she said. “I think people with strong faith have a personal practice of seriously asking questions, but we don't feel like we're doing it in community. So people like me… I’m really interested in creating a space where cynics can ask those questions.”
Like certain religious rituals, “terse'' materializes and demands existence, immanence, and incarnation.
Theaters are one such place, where collective searches among both performers and audience members are still possible.
“Theatre is always about investigation, at least the rooms I try to curate,” she said. “It's about the process of finding out what the piece is, and it's something that continues to grow throughout the run. Keeping that kind of ritualism alive makes me believe in theater.”
Well, not all kinds of theater.
“I feel like musical theater is kind of stagnant right now,” she said, apologizing for calling her “flirty” on the subject. She says, “There aren't that many things that maximize the potential of the medium. If you use all your senses, you can do everything. In theory, you should be able to do it.”
Terce, an exhilarating hybrid, may indicate the future direction. It is being staged by New York's experimental mainstay, his HERE Arts Center, as part of an annual festival called Prototype, and is touted as a platform for new opera, but one that seems to expand its definition. More and more works are being programmed.Christian's work, like that of Meredith Monk before her, is music as This is a theater where tight harmonies and elaborate fugues alternate with free grooves and loosely structured choreography (directed by Keenan Tyler Olyphant). You can enjoy it as a recording, but it's specifically designed as a 360-degree experience that requires you to be there.
In other words, like certain religious rituals, not to mention the revelations on which they are based, “terse” materialize and require existence, immanence, and incarnation. To paraphrase the title of a Sinatra song about God, that's what church is like to me.