Fringe: i hope this finds you well

Sabine Pendry / Arieh Chrem
Mon 9 Sep ’24 - Wed 11 Sep ’24
An electronic opera. A call into the void and a struggle for the right words.
Mon 9 Sep ’24
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Wed 11 Sep ’24

A woman sits in a blue capsule and types a letter to a nameless confidante. Her words fly across the screen, and her voice floats in empty space. She sings aloud what she cannot write down and she writes down what she cannot sing, always searching for the right angle. What emerges is a call into the void, an attempt to tune in, and a struggle for the right words. 

A music-theatre piece following a one-way correspondence between a present body and an absent body. The desire to transmit across a vast distance becomes an act of will, an adrenaline-fueled game that blurs the line between the real and the imagined. 

This work combines voice, music, and typed text to explore loss, delusion, and the lengths we go to create meaning in the face of absence.

  • Language: English
  • Duration: 50 min.

Credits

concept, dramaturgy, music composition, text, performance Sabine Pendry sound design, live electronics Arieh Chrem light design, scenography Erik van de Wijdeven

The American singer/actor/theatremaker/composer Sabine Pendry is based in Amsterdam. Her work often relies on the intimacy of the sung voice, the lyricism of language, and physicality to create subjective and immersive theatrical worlds. She enjoys stretching the poetic trickiness of words to the point of overkill and hilarity - this reflects her fascination with excess and her desire to find humor and meaning within themes of existential eeriness, grief, and power.

Having begun i hope this finds you well as a solo, the current performance featuring live electronics is the result of collaboration in a duo with Peruvian/Spanish sound designer, composer, performer and producer Arieh Chrem, whose work focuses on experimental approaches to interaction between musicians and electronics and the re-interpretation of existing musical material in novel and eye-opening ways. Arieh’s work often includes interdisciplinary collaboration at the core, having worked extensively in the world of contemporary dance and composed for film. i hope this finds you well marks their second collaboration in a string of many to come.