A Period of Animate Existence

Pig Iron Theatre Company premiered a new symphonic theater hybrid that offerd a meditation on life and the future of the planet, set in a time of rapid ecological and technological changes. The piece was developed in collaboration with Pig Iron artistic director and co-founder Dan Rothenberg, composer Troy Herion, playwright Will Eno, and designer Mimi Lien. Transcending traditional narrative forms, A Period of Animate Existence brought together actors, classical musicians, three generations of choirs, and electronic music in five staged movements of what Pig Iron described as "hallucinatory visions." Echoing the character and pacing of a 19th-century symphony, the story wove together perspectives of children, elders, and machines with complex soundscapes. Prior to the work's premiere at the 2017 Fringe Festival, Pig Iron presented scaled-down concert versions of individual movements, along with panels and presentations in collaboration with the Penn Program in the Environmental Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania.

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