DOORWAYS (from THRENOS for the Throat)

THRENOS (for the Throat)

The transition from animal to meat is one that intentionally mutes the life and death of its subject. Unlike humans, these animals generally die in concealment, and the dead are not mourned. In Threnos, what is so often hidden behind the scenes is brought onto the stage in a para-liturgical rite, a performance that offers space for reckoning and reflection. Throughout, the throat acts as a kind of locus—a metaphorical and literal site of language, ingestion, song, slaughter, swallowing, and vulnerability, connecting the mourners and the mourned in their shared physicality.

Composer / concept: Jacob Cooper (USA)
Direction / concept: Karmina Šilec (SI)
Texts: Dora Malech (USA)
Video: Young Joo Lee (KR, USA)
Set: Dorian Šilec Petek (SI)
Costumes: Tina Bonča (SI)
Light: Andrej Hajdinjak (SI)
Sound: Danilo Ženko (SI)
Camera: Rudi Uran (SI)

Performed by: New Music Theatre Choregie (SI)
Production: Carmina Slovenica

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I carved the air to make two doorways
Each hinge was a name I’d known
I split the lips of buried vessels
Left no marker and alone

I stirred pictures out of red dust
Then blew and bade each form forgive

I cleared a path through years of leavings
Led back to a given hour

As a rope I stretched myself
I could feel steady breath at both ends
What passed through me was bound to me
I cut a part for no mouth
The yield lit by a bright word
Each question was answered in ash

Viscera told time in stories
Time told stories of its own

The minutes weren’t mine to keep
I slept the sleep of the certain

Night pressed its lines in my skin
A tally of the parts I still owed
Older hinges were held by red rust
I cried to pry them open
I called for affirmation
Each question was answered in ache

A net cast over sunset
Limbs bound beyond hold a law upheld
Skin stitched itself with a sharpened word

Last word’s consolation
Grafted to the sky the open eye
Met and held up at each beginning

And the bandage unwound as I walked backwards
The sun flashed its signal off a sharpened edge

A flag given to the wind
Reduced to one thread a fine line over
Stone set on stone on shaking stone

Note tucked under the tongue
All bled together all bled to one bled into one
Breath is bound to its beginning

And the bandage unwound as I walked backwards
The sun flashed its signal off a sharpened edge
The wound unbound wept beyond consolation

A day turned toward its center
Wielding the night’s tremor night yielding me
A knife a neck a day again

Day turned inside outward
I took my meantime it took my eyes my eyes mistook me
Each night proffering its throats

And the bandage unwound as I walked backwards
The sun flashed its signal off a sharpened edge
The wound unbound wept beyond consolation
The moths nursed the slash leaving nectar

A loose tourniquet a lost truth
A vain etiquette a false choice
A loose grip and a blade bade
A lost cause in motion
Tracing margins with no center
All hollowed to vow
All given to air
Led to the edge
Bleeding the void