For this production of Mozart's Don Giovanni, the directorial concept was rooted in the world of the future. In a world post digital frontier, how do we create a place that changes and shifts in a fleeting, reactionary way to the events onstage?
From funeral services after the death of the Commendatore to a dating app advertisement during Leporello's famous catalogue aria, I created ads that reflected the insistent, invasive presence of technology. These were featured over 4 independent projection screens that hung over the buildings of the set.
The initial soundscape during the audience’s entrance and the preshow announcement featured a Siri-esque reminder to turn off your cellphones and beware of cyborgs in the audience, setting the stage from the beginning for a futuristic world removed from our own time. The production concluded not with the traditional statue, but rather a cyborg who eventually returns to drag Don Giovanni into a VR hellscape, adding a full headset as 1s and 0s a la the Matrix consumed the entire set, reminding the audience that the world we’ve seen onstage is closer than we may think.