Dwelling Structure

“ … if you think about words for house—other than ‘house’ itself, and other than home—you would say, ok then, what about ‘abode’; ‘this is my abode’. Abode, abide, to bide, to use time, to spend time. When you talk about an ‘abode’ you are not just talking about a physical form of house, you are talking about a very particular place where you spend time. What about ‘dwelling’? To dwell has a sense for me like when you see the water coming up in the river to the surface, and making its current form disappear. ‘Dwelling’ to me has some sort of sense of the welling up of time, and time spent in a place.”
Richard Leplastrier

A family home on historic Ruckers Hill. Please, sit down, make yourself at home. Welcome to Dwelling Structure: An Opera in 8 Time Use Episodes, where—to borrow from Emily Dickinson—you will dwell in possibility, a doorless house.

‘… perhaps the most beautifully judged site-specific work I have seen… By the end, I felt exactly the kind of effect that Octavio Paz claims for poetry – that it takes you from silence to silence, but by the end the silence has changed. It is mysteriously joyous, and profoundly beautiful.’

‘A subtle and important achievement pushing the edges of the form in all the right ways.’

‘Ironically set in an old Northcote music-hall, this “sound-scape with figures” production (scarily) reminded me of a petty-criminal friend who would break into and rob people’s houses, shower, cook a meal, take a nap and even swim in their pool if they had one.’

‘It was only a night later that I had a visceral response: a dream in which my house was alive and wielding knives!’

‘For opera aficionados out there, I’m confident you will love this, however if you’re a novice like me, or you just like female sopranos, you might want to do some research first.’