Eight Songs for a Mad King at Radialsystem
Following the presentation of Eight Songs for a Mad King at the Wigmore Hall in May 2023, Elaine Mitchener presents the work at Radialsystem Berlin in a new staged version in collaboration with Ensemble MAM. and directed by Dam Van Huynh.
Peter Maxwell Davies’ iconic 1968 piece of music theatre “Eight Songs for a Mad King” addresses the relationship between madness and power. The work centres around the psychic disintegration of the British monarch George III and the simultaneous moral disintegration of colonial power. Elaine Mitchener’s staging and interpretation of “Eight Songs for a Mad King” can also be read as a meta-narrative about the culture industry and its perpetuation of postcolonial violence; in particular, in relation to the absence of non-white female bodies and voices and their non-representation within a European canon of classical and contemporary music.
Saturday 25 November 2023, 20:00
Radialsystem, Berlin – Germany
www.radialsystem.de
Curator and performance – Elaine Mitchener
Musical director – Sarah Saviet
Choreography and lighting – Dam Van Huynh
MAM.manufaktur für aktuelle musik:
Violin – Sarah Saviet
Clarinet – Michiko Ogawa
Piano – Joseph Houston
Flute – Rebecca Lenton
Cello – Marie Schmit
Drums – Rie Miyama Watanabe
Programme:
Joy Boy by Julius Eastman
Owner‘s Manual by Elaine Mitchener
Eight Songs for a Mad King by Peter Maxwell Davies