Artist stories

Multi-media soundscape artists and DANM alumni, Jessica Faith Hayden and Chris Molla came into KZSC to talk about their current project, Peer Gynt,  by Henrik Ibsen, a collaborative multi-venue experimental musical theatrical event developed and produced by the Theater Arts department and Digital Arts and New Media program.

Jessica is a theatrical performer/writer/interactive object creator. Chris is a musical composer, sound creator, and former member of Camper Van Beethoven. Both are successful collaborators making new media installation art using historical archival artifacts, soundscapes, and audio/visual content that involves participation for activation and education. They worked with Peer Gynt’s director and professor of theater arts, Kimberly Jannarone, on the wildly successful “Stop the Press!” theatrical event from 2010.

This collaborative production of Peer Gynt combines traditional theater with new media arts to introduce a new audience to Ibsen’s timeless play that questions the nature of the self. Henrik Ibsen wrote this play in 1876 using Norwegian fairy tales and his own life. Many have argued that Peer Gynt is the first of modernistic play. It is very appropriate that the play gets a 21st-century interpretation.

Along with the production there is a conference, Peer Gynt in the Digital Age, which takes place the second weekend of the performance, March 8-9 at the UCSC’s Second Stage Theater, Theater Arts Center. This international conference brings together scholars, designers, and dramaturgs from Norway, Chris and Jess will be speaking March 9th at the conference about “The Sonic Onion: Layering the World of Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt through Sound.”