Don Juan

Abstract

Background: This ongoing research extends Schaupp's work in combining music and text/drama by exploring new ways to meld these artforms into a narrative performance project suitable for wide dissemination to both theatre and music audiences. Her role in this project was as co-creator, musical curator and director, actor and musician and was supported by Australia Council as part of Schaupp's Music Fellowship. She collaborated with actor/director/writer Tama Matheson using Lord Byron's life story and his epic poem Don Juan to create a new theatre/music work where music plays the role not only of accompanying the words, but assumes a character and deepens the text's narrative. Contribution: The 86-minute work took some six months to co-create with Tama Matheson, firstly in choosing a subject matter suitable for such a project and then curating music and weaving it into the contextual whole of the written script. Arguably, the work could be seen as having created a new art form, which combines drama (in the form of autobiography and poetry) with a stylistic variety of classical guitar music wherein the music takes different roles, from accompanying to deepening the text or indeed itself playing a character. As a performer, Schaupp was the sole musician and co-actor in various roles throughout the piece. Significance: There has been significant uptake of this project, with a premiere at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre then Canberra Street Theatre. The project was invited into Musica Viva's Countrywide Programme resulting in four regional performances in 2016. It was also included in the the 2016 Adelaide Festival Centre Series, Australian Festival of Chamber Music, Noosa Long Weekend and Redlands Performing Arts Complex Series.