Tomorrow night, the topic of melancholy will be addressed in senior Brenann Stacker's thesis project, "Sigh." The title perfectly describes the performance, which seeks to explore the depths of human emotions and shows that sometimes words just aren't enough.
"Sigh" is a blend of poetry and other works on melancholy put together by Stacker, who bridges the gaps with her own original writing. Stacker was inspired after reading Sarah Ruhl's "Melancholy Play" and Sarah Kane's "4.48 Psychosis. "There was something similar about how Sarah Kane was saying it [the meaning of melancholy] and the way that Sarah Ruhl was, and I just thought, what if we put those two together? What would it make? Because there were two different tones about the same thing," Stacker said.
To see what would happen, Stacker created the titular character Sigh (sophomore Emily Pantalone) who finds her identity in being despondent. Sigh struggles to stay melancholic and to determine what the emotion is despite the insistence from other characters that what she is experiencing is actually depression.
Sigh recreates a memory of Reque (junior Andrew Squier), who has passed away, in order to remain in her dejected state. Sigh's decision to associate with her own unhappiness creates a cycle from which it is impossible to escape, bringing the characters back to the beginning only after finally reaching what they hoped was the end.
Acting as an outside observer, Shade (played by Stacker) is an alternate version of Sigh, who exists outside of the cycle Sigh is trapped in. The singing voices, sung by junior Carolyn Berliner, also represent another fractured version of Sigh. Together, the three performers collectively recreate different stereotypes of melancholy.
"The reason I'm singing instead of talking is because there are certain moments when you can't express something with words, or when something is either too heightened or too suppressed, and music can kind of let that out," Berliner said when discussing her role as the voices. When the characters are unable to speak, Berliner's voice sings for them, capturing the emotions in the performance in an alternate form.
Despite acting mostly as a voice in the performance, Berliner's costume and physical appearance also play an important role in breaking down the stereotypes of sadness. Berliner designed her character's physical appearance around the glamorous interpretation of melancholy depicted in old movies, instead of the darker and more depressed grey sweatpant costume of sadness that the character Sigh embraces.
"My character is going to be in a gown with gloves and pearls. The movie star look of old Hollywood, of the woman at two o'clock in the morning at the piano who you know is really depressed, but she's there anyway," Berliner said. "And she's singing, and you just want to know what's wrong, but there's beauty in it. So this is just a way to say, this isn't real, she's [Sigh] real."
Junior Jared Trudeau, the composer and musical director of the production, based the framework of his music on seven pitches he thought sounded like a speck of light, an image he took from the show's original stage directions. But the use of only seven pitches allows for a certain amount of freedom within its limitations, creating a constrained playfulness that is cultivated in many aspects of the show.
Of working within the framework he created, Trudeau said, "You can do lots of different rhythmic patterns and lots of different textures. Some of it is just vocals, some is just piano. So despite having a limited tonal palette, I still can do as much as I want with it."
Stacker compares the performance with the work of Tim Burton. "It's very realistic but a little off. There's a little bit of crookedness," she said. "The slant nature of the show allows for the audience to view the topic of melancholy from a fresh perspective, to really delve into the emotion in order to understand and come to terms with it.
"It's a defense of melancholy," Stacker added. "Who defines one person's light and dark?"
"Sigh" will be performed Wednesday night in Balch Arena Theater at 7:30 p.m. The performance is free.
