Silence

Nothing you do matters, the world keeps getting worse…or does it?

Silence irreverently rejects this defeatist attitude. Instead, offering us one of agency and hope. This searing satire grapples with today’s issues from gender, to patriarchy, social roles, and religion. Written over 20 years ago, this play has only grown in relevance.

Join us! Celebrate our 25th year by helping to fund this newly commissioned operatic version of Silence.

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Synopsis

A remarkable play of an epic journey & based on a true story. Silence explores gender identity, power dynamics.

Summary

By order of England’s King Ethelred, Ymma of Normandy is forced to wed the fourteen-year-old lord, Silence of Cumbria. Their union, initially met with aversion, morphs into one of opportunity as on their wedding night, the two discover that Lord Silence is actually a lady! Just as the bride and groom find common ground, blood follows them from their marital bed and forces the two to flee from the king’s murderous rampage. Silence: The Opera, encapsulates Moira Buffini’s provocative journey of self-discovery into a 90-minute music grandeur.

Ymma's Aria Scene

Soprano – Lara Ciekiewicz
Pianist – Laura Loewen

Cast

Creative Team
Darrin Hagen

Darrin Hagen is an award-winning playwright, author, composer and Queer historian.

Darrin Hagen is an award-winning playwright, author, composer and Queer historian. He has written (or co-written) over 40 plays, and has been produced across Canada, America and in Europe. He launched Guys In Disguise in 1987, dragging a group of underground Queens to the surface, eventually becoming a Fringe drag juggernaut that has endured for 35 years. He hosted live television in Edmonton for over a decade, and came out of the closet on the air five minutes into his very first live broadcast, becoming the first openly queer and openly genderfluid TV host in Canada. His award-winning 1996 debut, The Edmonton Queen was expanded into a book-length project published by Brindle & Glass Publishing. Other published work includes the much-loved Tornado Magnet: A Salute to Trailer Court Women and Queering The Way: The Loud & Queer Anthology, as well as several short stories and essays. He has received 7 Sterling Awards for his work in Edmonton Theatre, and over 40 nominations. He received an AMPIA for Best Male Host for the Life Channel Series Who’s On Top? He also hosted the online TelusOptik series Queer Places, produced by Frederick Kroetsch. Other plays by Darrin include international hits With Bells On (currently being adapted into a musical by Live & In Colour in New York); BitchSlap! and Typhoon Judy; as well as the multimedia performance Buddy. With Trevor Schmidt he co-created Flora & Fawna’s Field Trip; Flora & Fawna Have Beaver Fever; Prepare For The Worst; Don’t Frown at the Gown; Puck Bunnies; Dragula; Crack in the Mirror as well as the multi-award-nominated musical Klondykes. He has also composed music or created sound design for nearly every theatre company in Edmonton. During the pandemic off-season he has composed a string quartet, an album of electronica, and an entire suite of music for piano and strings. Most recently, he collaborated with Mile Zero Dance artistic director Gerry Morita on Shadow of a Doubt, an installation dance performance hosted by Artists in the Fallow. He also created and directed The Foxy Lady Disco Dancing Lounge Rhinestone Turkey Baster Relay Marathon for Fruit Loop as part of Pride 2021. He has served as Playwright in Residence at Theatre Network and Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre, and as Writer in Residence for Edmonton Public Library, The University of Alberta, and Macewan University. He was named one of 100 Edmontonians of the Century, as well as one of the 25 Most Influential Alberta Artists in the last 25 years (AFA). In 2013 he was inducted into the Q Hall of Fame Canada.

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Leslie Uyeda

Composer, conductor and pianist Leslie Uyeda was born in Montréal and lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Composer, conductor and pianist Leslie Uyeda was born in Montréal and lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. Leslie has been coach/pianist/conductor/chorus director with opera companies across Canada, and in addition to conducting mainstage productions of traditional répertoire, has conducted her own operas Game Misconduct and When the Sun Comes Out (commissioned and produced by the Vancouver Queer Arts Festival). Leslie has composed four song cycles to the exquisite and poignant poetry of Japanese-Canadian poet Joy Kogawa, and over fifty songs to the gorgeous poetry of Lorna Crozier. Three of Uyeda’s Crozier song cycles were recently commercially recorded - Plato’s Angel, The First Woman and The Sex Lives of Vegetables. Recent commissions/world premières include Empress Jitō Dances for the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra; two song cycles for soprano and piano - Midnight Watch and A Quiet Place; Three Lorca Songs for soprano, harp and percussion, and A Dance for All of Us, for Little Chamber Music, and Hommage à Hafiz, a concerto for flute and string orchestra. In Jan/Feb. 2022 Portland Opera produced the American première of Uyeda’s opera When the Sun Comes Out, with six very successful performances. In April 2022 Vancouver’s award winning choir musica intima (commissioned and) recorded A Summer’s Singing, an unaccompanied work for mixed choir. In March of 2023 her five songs will be premièred for Little Chamber Music in Vancouver. Leslie Uyeda’s music has been published by the Avondale Press, now held within the Canadian Music Centre. Leslie is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre, a member of the Canadian League of Composers, the Association of Canadian Women Composers, and SOCAN. Leslie would like to thank Kim Mattice-Wanat for the opportunity to compose this opera for Opera NUOVA’s 25th Anniversary.

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