Slide is a concert-length music/theater work featuring new music
ensemble eighth blackbird, actor/singer Rinde Eckert, and
composer/performer Steve Mackey.
Eckert plays Renard, an
enigmatic psychologist who struggles to describe an experiment
examining reactions to in- and out-of-focus slides. The results reveal
that our decisions are based on habits or conventions that make it
difficult for us to see clearly.
Slide uses the experiment as a
metaphor for today’s world, where persuasive images are employed to
sell a commercial or political product. The work explores the seduction
and manipulation of the American psyche, but also the effect of the
experiment on Renard himself, who seems irreversibly changed by the
experience.
eighth blackbird and Steven Mackey take onstage
roles in the story. The music is memorized, and projected images play
an important role. The goal is an unmediated exploration and expression
of sound, text, movement and image.
Slide is being created for concert halls and theater spaces and will begin touring in March 2010.
To download a more detailed description, click here .
This
project is being managed by Susan Endrizzi and Nicole Borrelli-Hearn. Contact details
are below.
That night in the lab after the subjects had left, Renard thought of #14 whose voice had been sweet:
“She is young,” Renard imagines, “with sharp green eyes and long fine fingers.”
Or #6 who reminded him of his brother: Slow, obstinate, hands like hammers, small feet in quick little brown shoes.
Or
#23: Matronly, older than she looks, daytime soaps, Elvis, coffee cake
in the morning, collection of ceramic music boxes, son in the Army,
several years in a ribbon factory.
Slide
TOMT
Harris
Slide is a concert-length music/theater work featuring new music
ensemble eighth blackbird, actor/singer Rinde Eckert, and
composer/performer Steve Mackey. 
That night in the lab after the subjects had left, Renard thought of #14 whose voice had been sweet: