Solo

The full performance text of postdramatic interactive theatre piece Solo: an intimate and immersive site-based response to Maurice Ravel's violin piece, Tzigane. The performance is a poetic and poignant 10-minute experience based on real-life biographical events. It is played out for two audience participants at a time, from the moment the music was conceived to the curtain call. The participants play the roles of the violinist, Jelly d'Arányi, and the composer, Ravel. Together they enact the true story of how this piece of music came to be.

Solo is part of The Ravel Trilogy (2014-2018), devised by Pinchbeck & Smith. Each piece deconstructs a piece of classical music by the composer, Maurice Ravel, and transposes it into contemporary performance as score theatre. In doing so, the body of devised theatre work asks questions of the relationships between dramaturgy and musicology, performance score and music score, stage direction and musical notation.

Keywords: Classical music ; Composed theatre ; Composition ; Concert theatre ; Contemporary performance ; Devised theatre ; Dramaturgy ; Immersive theatre ; Musical scores ; Musicology ; Narrative ; Orchestral theatre ; Performance scores ; Postdramatic ; Score theatre