Cecilia Rubino, Chair of Theater, is the co-writer and director of new documentary play with music with COPA faculty, Tanya Kalmonovitch
THE TAR SANDS SONGBOOK:
October 5 & 6th, 7 pm at the New School’s Steifel Hall, 55 West 13th Street, 4th Floor.
An illuminating work of documentary theater, The Tar Sands Songbook asks us to reconsider our unseen relationships with oil. Creator Tanya Kalmanovitch knows these relationships all too well. Born in Fort McMurray, Canada, near the site of the Alberta Tar Sands, the world’s largest bitumen reservoir, she was a child during an era of furious development in the 1980s. She made her decision to become a musician as a teenager because “it had nothing to do with oil.” Fort McMurray has since become a flashpoint of international clashes over energy, the environment, and the economy. Written in collaboration with director Cecilia Rubino, Kalmonovitch’s polyphonic piece weaves together a chorus of voices with an original, improvised score. The words of indigenous activists, engineers, heavy equipment operators, elders, oil patch workers, scientists, and those of her own family fuel discussions of our past and the powerful forces that shape our future.
Get tickets or watch the preview.
