WILD

About the Production

A theatrical recital for voice, piano and spoken word

Created and performed by ARIA award-winning pianist and Classic FM presenter, Tamara-Anna Cislowska, and renowned soprano, director and writer, Tarita Botsman.

A wild woman is often called broken. In opera, in art and in life, she sings anyway.

Wild explores the many shades and textures of that voice: the words she chooses, the music she makes, and the voices of the women who came before her. This work is a theatrical encounter with women who have loved, lost, endured, misbehaved and refused to disappear.

At its heart is an encounter between two artists who have spent their lives on stage: acclaimed pianist Tamara-Anna Cislowska and soprano, director and theatre maker Tarita Botsman. Together, through music, story and character, they bring all that experience to bear on what it means to be called wild.

The performance begins with the language used to contain women: broken, abandoned, difficult, too much. Music and spoken text gradually pull those labels apart. An operatic lament meets a street song. An unsent letter finds its voice. Grief gives way to humour; composure cracks open into anger, pleasure and release.

The repertoire travels from Giacomelli, Verdi, Mahler and Bizet to Sondheim, Kander and Ebb, Amy Winehouse and contemporary Australian music, including a new song cycle by Elena Kats-Chernin AO. Familiar songs acquire new meanings beside lesser-heard voices. Cislowska's piano is an active presence in the drama: it consoles, contradicts, remembers and sometimes refuses to let a story end where we expect it to.

With original writing by Botsman, Wild brings the intimacy of a recital into the vivid world of theatre.

Wild can also be presented with piano and a focused and specialist 3D lighting design, with scope for projection and a richer visual treatment in larger festival venues.

Funny, sensual and at times uncomfortably honest, Wild asks what happens when a woman stops performing the version of herself that others find acceptable.

A testament to the strength, resilience, and unwavering spirit of women.