Private Country

Premiere and Commission by The Chocolate Factory Theater in October 2013

Private Country is a reconstruction of American musical theater through my subjective history, memory, and aesthetic desires. This is an embodiment of longing that smells like the great green grass of our pastoral dreams.

"Song and Script Taking One Space After Another" - Brian Seibert, New York Times

Photos by Brian Rogers

Music, Choreography, Direction by Tatyana Tenenbaum. Performed by Talya Epstein, Odeya Nini, Peter Sciscioli, Laurel Snyder, Ezra Tenenbaum and Tatyana Tenenbaum. Recorded Sound Engineering by Ezra Tenenbaum. Live Sound Engineering by Adam Bach. Lighting by Madeline Best. Scenic Design by Anne Krauss and Stephen Schaffenberger.

Where song becomes sound, Tatyana Tenenbaum brings dual identities as composer and choreographer into a single form. She explores the permeable relationship between the voice and body through a series of consecutive duets that mine the continuum from spoken word to pitched singing. Gradations of physicality—from gesture to full phonic embodiment—weave a vocal narrative that is at once a deeply physical and astutely musical expression.

Private Country elicits moments of nostalgia for a classic American pastime. In the tradition of Robert Ashley, Laurie Anderson or Meredith Monk, the musicality straddles a world between song and poem, incurring a series of unexpected shifts in timbre and tone. Movement exists as both evidence and consequence of the singing body.

Private Country's development was made possible, in part, by a 2010/11 Fresh Tracks Residency at New York Live Arts; as well as creative residencies at Pieter PASD (LA) and Peaceable Barn (Redding, CT). 

Tatyana Tenenbaum / Private Country context from Peter W Richards on Vimeo.