FAWN Chamber Creative is a two-time Dora Award Nominated experimental music and opera collective that finds intersections between art forms and audiences. Known for their daring live performances, FAWN prioritizes cross-disciplinary collaboration to create new works and audience experiences that defy tradition and blur the lines between genres. Their work in opera focuses on exploring the creation process with a special focus on collaborative methods, such as devising, leading FAWN and their collaborating artists to new and unexpected territory.
Synopsis:
Cells of Wind is a new chamber opera by Victoria-based composer Anna Höstman and Montréal-based poet/librettist Oana Avasilichioaei. The story is inspired by Romanian artist Lena Constante’s real-life experience as a political prisoner in Romania, who was imprisoned for twelve years with much of that time spent in solitary confinement. Cells of Wind builds out from Constante’s ordeal and serves as a window into someone subjected to these complex and troubling conditions.
Avasilichioaei’s libretto observes a woman being kept in an administrative segregation unit, the term used in Canada’s correctional system and where Cells of Wind takes place. Surrounded by women’s voices from scattered cells and a perpetually patrolling guard, we see the lines between this woman’s memories, imagination, and sense of reality blend during a period of extreme, forced isolation. With music described by Höstman as, “grains of sand in the wind”, this piece will immerse audiences in the sounds of confinement that encompass whirling thoughts and recollections, and exhibit the mind’s role in attempting to maintain a sense of self.
Development stage: Updates to the score have been made since the score & design dramaturgy workshop from July 4-9, 2022 in Toronto. Watch the mini doc of our 2022 workshop process here!
Scale of Work: Cells of Wind is a multimedia chamber opera, intended for a mid-sized theatre, with four lead singers, a five-singer chorus, and a six-piece ensemble (listed at the end).
Next steps: A second-stage workshop in Winter 2025 of the revised score and a prototype exploration of the set, projection, and movement elements conceived in the first-stage workshop. This will culminate in an invited workshop presentation in Toronto and an opera-in-concert performance co-presented with NUMUS in Kitchener-Waterloo on January 29, 2025. Wilfrid Laurier University will be joining the second-stage workshop as an educational partner to provide internships to their C3 Master’s students.
The Canadian Context:
The United Nations Mandela Rules state that solitary confinement is the “confinement of prisoners for 22 hours or more a day without meaningful human contact” (Rule 44). The anchoring theme of solitary confinement in Cells of Wind is highly relevant to the Canadian context, where the practice is called administrative segregation. According to a recent report by Professors Jane Sprott and Anthony Doob (2021), two 2019 court rulings deemed that the use of administrative segregation violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Canada has since changed its methods just enough with the passing of Bill C-83, so that they no longer violate the Charter. Bill C-83 mandates that prisoners placed into administrative segregation must be out of their cells for four hours, with two of those hours involving “meaningful human contact.” However, recent reports indicate that prisoners are still not getting their allotted time out of their cells, along with other human rights concerns (Sprott and Doob, 2021).
Solitary confinement continues to be a social justice issue of vital importance in Canada that merits increased public awareness. With so much focus on inequities in the American criminal justice system, FAWN plans to use Cells of Wind as a platform to inform audiences of the impacts of solitary confinement in Canada, including the long-standing struggle over its use. We will do so through the production itself as well as outreach programming on topics of Canadian exceptionalism and solitary confinement in Canada. This opera will be a timely contribution to the ongoing national dialogue on criminal justice issues.
Cells of Wind
by
Anna Höstman (composer, BC) &
Oana Avasilichioaei (librettist, QC)
Commissioned & developed by FAWN Chamber Creative
Duration: approx. 60 min
Creative Team:
Stage Director & Co-Dramaturge: Amanda Smith
Music Director: Adam Scime
Set Designer: Shannon Doyle
Lighting Designer: Noah Feaver
Projection Design Team: potatoCake_Digital (Emily Soussana & Andrew Scriver)
Choreographer: Alyssa Martin
Costume Designer: Joyce Padua
Makeup Designer: Erica Jeffery
Co-Dramaturge: Graham Cozzubo
Four leads:
Rebecca Cuddy, playing L, an incarcerated woman (mezzo-soprano)
Evan Korbut, playing H, the remembered lover of L (baritone)
Rebecca Gray, playing G, an incarcerated woman (soprano)
Xander Bechard, playing Guard (tenor)
Chorus of Incarcerated Women (five sopranos):
Danielle Aprile (soprano)
Justine Owen (soprano)
Emma Heaton (soprano)
Keely McPeek (soprano)
Gwenna Fairchild-Tayler (soprano)
Ensemble (six players):
Sara Constant – flute
Tiago Delgado – clarinet
Michael Bridge – accordion
Ilana Waniuk – violin
Dobrochna Zubek – cello
Nathan Petitpas – percussion
Content Consultants:
Dr. Kelly Hannah-Moffat
Dr. Paula Maurutto
Dr. Julius Haag
Community Engagement Coordinator:
Gwenna Fairchild-Taylor
Associate Producer:
Sara Constant
Watch the Cells of Wind first stage workshop mini documentary
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