Listening to the Planets

Name: Listening to the Planets - Ari Teperberg
Start: 2025-03-13T21:00:00+01:00
Location: Frascati

Ari Teperberg

Tue 11 Mar ’25 - Thu 13 Mar ’25

A satellite solo. A struggle to find orientation.

Tue 11 Mar ’25

Thu 13 Mar ’25

Tue 11 Mar ’25

21:00

Try-out

Frascati

Frascati 2

Tickets

Wed 12 Mar ’25

21:00

Première

Frascati

Frascati 2

Tickets

Thu 13 Mar ’25

21:00

Frascati

Frascati 2

Tickets

I am listening to The Planets (1917), a monumental orchestral suite by the British composer Gustav Holst. Can you hear it through me? It transforms into words, images, movements. I try to listen even deeper and hear the artist writing it, navigating a brutal war to which he did not enlist. His music turns on stage into matter in motion - it orbits, gets distorted, disappears and reappears.

I listen again and hear his attempt to address a stellar system so much mightier than him, wishing for perspective and distance from the ugliness of his own kind. His music becomes a vehicle with which I can travel far into the distant ends of the universe, past the threshold of perception.

I split and extend myself to measure the various distances around and within me, tracing the delay between the sending of my messages and their arrival. Am I the satellite or its planet?

Listening to the Planets is a bare solo piece that combines text, sound, movement and object animation, weaving together a personal journal of the performer with historical research about a composer. It observes the act of art-making as a means for time-travel; a bridge between a time of crisis and an imagined future; a way to forge a piece of life within violence and despair into form that will hopefully outlive the darkness, supporting a belief in the artistic act as an empathetic and peaceful exchange.

Duration: 50 mins
Premiere: Wed 12 March 21:00

Credits

maker and performer Ari Teperberg sonic dramaturgy and design Nathan Marcus light design Paulina Prokop costume Caz Egelie dramaturgy Ricarda Franzen outside eye Isadora Tomasi object animation advice Thommy Kraft artistic advice Sister Sylvester special thanks to Inbal Yomtovian, Sabine Pendry, Noa Roei, Oded Yadin Rimon, Sjaron Minailo, Dor Frank, Sonia Kazovsky, Sandberg Instituut

The first version of the piece was presented as part of the Sandberg Instituut graduation show, concluding the master’s program Re:Master Opera.

About the maker

Rosenblum Prize laureate 2022, Ari Teperberg graduated from the School of Visual Theatre in Jerusalem in 2013. His works have been touring internationally since 2010 - Untitled Document, And my Heart Almost Stood Still, Jonathan and the Blue Table. During Amsterdam Fringe 2024 And my Heart Almost Stood Still was performed in Frascati.

In his works, Ari Teperberg constructs performative mechanisms that take place between the sensory, cognitive and emotional systems of the audience and the performer(s). Fascinated with distance, voice and the eternal struggle to communicate, his research-driven works invite for a world of sound, movement, action and object.

Ari collaborated as artistic director, director and maker with FeelBeit (or ‘Mekudeshet’) in Jerusalem - an organization jointly directed by Palestinians and Jews focusing on art and culture from the perspective of a shared reality. Ari has a longtime collaboration as a dancer in the Yasmeen Godder Company, and performed for Yonatan Levy, Ana Wild, Caz Egelie, Hildur Elísa Jónsdóttir and more. Ari taught in theatre, dance, opera and puppetry frameworks, and gives workshops sharing his working method "Performative Mechanisms".