Charles Darwin may be one of the most provocative figures in the past 200 years of history.
Darwin’s theory of natural selection provided another explanation for life, one where a designer is not necessary. Darwin’s theory of natural selection concerns evolution, not creationism.
However, how many people know of Darwin as a student, explorer and family man? newEar Contemporary Ensemble and Owen-Cox Dance will explore these facets in a piece titled DARWIN at 8 p.m. April 26 and 27 on the City Stage at Union Station. This performance is part of the group’s 20th anniversary season.
Originally, the show was an audio theater production for the National Audio Theatre Festivals featuring Richard Fish as Charles Darwin 2009. Michael Henry and Dwight Frizzell wrote the script/libretto. Frizzell teaches sound design at the Kansas City Art Institute and was a founding member of newEar. Henry, who received his undergraduate degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance, composed the music with Frizzell directing the production and creating sound designs. The show is being expanded for a newEar contemporary chamber opera version in 2013.
Frizzell says DARWIN has familiarity. “Darwin is a seminal figure. He was a youthful adventurer and a thoughtful scientist.” Frizzell says he approaches Darwin from a spiritualist point of view and absorbs Darwin’s ideas of mankind’s place in nature. “There is integration into nature with Darwin.”
During the era when Darwin was sailing around the world on the H.M.S. Beagle, most Europeans believed what the Bible preached – that the world was created by God in seven days. However, there was a school of thought that believed the fossil evidence found in rocks was evidence that a form of life had existed for thousands of years.
So interestingly, newEar, a contemporary group of musicians longing to produce and perform contemporary music, takes on Darwin. The chamber opera will feature four leading singers and at least 10 musicians. There could be six dancers as well. Mark Lowry, one of the founders and a percussionist, says the trick is to find the “music of our time.”
“The trick is to know that you will hear something you will like, something you are unsure of and wonder what we will do next,” Lowry says. newEar offers its listeners interesting and varied programs with a definite “what’s next?” factor. Frizzell, who also helped with programming and came up with the group’s name, believes what newEar offers is culturally relevant. “However, our name is the key to understanding. The real authority is your own ear. It’s what you are listening to and the moment you hear the music.”
Executive Administrator Joanne Stout says the “new” may simply be in the way the group imparts its message. Frizzell says the message of Darwin starts with Darwin’s induction to a unique club as a seafarer crossing the equator. “The initiation is essentially codified,” he says. “Darwin wrote of it in his journal and our piece begins with this.” Other strong images will include Darwin’s Tree of Life and some of the satire that surrounded him, including the Punch cartoonists who drew lots of apes relating to Darwin’s Descent of Man.
Jennifer Owen says the dance group performed with newEar in 2011 and sought out another opportunity to collaborate. Stout calls the work with the dancers as a natural extension to keep moving forward and exposing new audiences. “The friends of Owen-Cox will come see us,” Stout says. “It really enhances both our art forms.” Frizzell says the dancers will aid the visual component. “It will be exciting.”
As a choreographer, Owen appreciates being challenged, especially with the diverse music produced by newEar. “Collaborations mean that you have to fit yourself into the overall intent. It’s not programming your own dances, but being involved throughout,” Owen says. She plans on researching Darwin and his life. “One of the things I really enjoy is that history. I know with Darwin, we will have rich source material which I am sure we will also examine. And as with newEar, we fall into a similar conundrum. As contemporary dancers, we borrow from all the dance styles, but lean more into modern dance. There’s not classical ballet, but there are always elements in balance and fluidity.”
The group is also receiving help from UMKC Theatre program including Ron Schaeffer, teaching professor of stage management, and Tom Mardikes, chairman of the UMKC Theatre Department and professor of sound design. “We are creating a kind of musical theater,” Frizzell says. “It is an experience of words and sounds.” Robert Pherigo will play Darwin and soprano Sylvia Stoner Hawkins will play his wife Emma. Hawkins also plays the worm queen to represent Darwin’s studies of earthworms. “He had substantial text on ecology and aided gardeners,” Frizzell says.
The part of the opera that contains Darwin’s keynote statement on evolution is his aria in the Galapagos scene— this is where Darwin sings a few lines from the recapitulation to his ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES (1859) where he provides a summary of his theory …
“It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows.”
Lowry says 20 seasons prove they have staying power. “We continue to reach into the community and achieve a wider sense of ownership to our music.” Stout likens newEar to the idea of discovering the next Mozart or Beethoven. “You may hear the next great composer who will still be played 100 years from now,” she says.
