The MA project of the composer Paul Taro Schmidt involved developing an interdisciplinary form of the opera “MUGEN” that involved collaboration with multiple artists for: visuals, graphic design, animation, light, dance & sound.

description

The dreamer realises that he is sitting with his arms folded next to a woman lying on a bed, and she quietly confesses to the figure that she will soon die. This surreal encounter with the woman doesn’t faze the dreamer, and he asks her when she will die and whether she has to die. She confesses that she cannot change her fate and that she would like to ask the figure to bury her after her certain death. He is instructed to dig her grave with a large shell, bury her in it and erect a gravestone with a fragment of a fallen star. Finally, he is to wait in a hundred-year vigil for her self-proclaimed return. The dreamer follows her instructions and begins to count the days that pass as the sun moves from east to west. After some time, he wonders whether the woman has betrayed him. Unexpectedly, a white lily begins to grow from the fresh grave. At the end of its blooming period, he finally knows that 100 years have passed.

When reading this text, I asked myself: “Whose unconscious is it?”.

Mugen is an immersive theater based on Natsume Soseki’s short story, it combines surrealistic dream narration from Noh theater with time-disintegration of western opera performed at the Immersive Arts Space in Zurich