Alex McDowell, production designer for Death and the Powers, shared these notes with us detailing his experience working on the production design of Death and the Powers. We thought they were worth sharing. Thanks Alex! DEATH & THE POWERS - designing operabots Alex McDowell, March 9 2011 Death and the Powers was my first experience …
Karole Armitage interview and dancing robots
In this delightful interview, celebrated choreographer Karole Armitage discloses how she thought about choreographing the movements for each character in Death and the Powers, including the operabots. You'll gain an appreciation for how she makes each personality vivid and convincing through movement. We include new footage of the Prelude and Nicholas (Hal Cazalet) cavorting with …
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Death and the Powers, the animation!
Those fun-loving folks at the Chicago Opera Theater think it's not enough to upload oneself into The System. For a full digital reincarnation these days, you need to get animated. (Just ask Robert Pinsky, who has attained his animated apotheosis on The Simpsons.) So here it is, the Powers family drama, as told by animated …
Boston Globe spotlights Operabots
Here's a charming article in the Boston Globe that focuses on the creative and technological efforts that went into the "operabots" in Death and the Powers. The article reveals how director Diane Paulus and choreographer Karole Armitage latched on to some early technical quirks and glitches and used them to imbue the operabots with dramatic …
A radical new approach to live performance
Here's another excellent article about Death and the Powers from Variety. This one sheds light on how composer Tod Machover and production designer Alex McDowell thought about rendering the character of Simon Powers through the elements of the stage design and the development of "Disembodied Performance" technology. "Machover sees applications for this technology in large …
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Science Friday features Death and the Powers
NPR's popular weekly program, Science Friday, this week put a spotlight on Death and the Powers. Composer Tod Machover talks about his desire to use technology to amplify rather than diminish the live human presence in musical performance. You can listen to the podcast here (click on the audio player in the upper left-hand corner). …
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Nice shout out on Stuff at Night!
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“Guitar Hero Goes to the Opera” – The Atlantic
"The story is as old as humanity itself. A man—in this case a successful businessman—grapples with his own mortality and wants desperately to leave a legacy after he dies. But this story has never been told as composer Tod Machover tells it." So begins this excellent article about Death and the Powers, just out in …
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Tod Machover and Diane Paulus at “On Point”
Tom Ashbrook, host of the radio talk show "On Point", conducted a terrific interview today with Death and the Powers composer Tod Machover and director Diane Paulus. The conversation delved into whether today's technology has transformed the age-old human desire to conquer death into a quest that seems plausible and possibly even attainable in the …
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Christian Science Monitor delves into Death and the Powers
There's an excellent article, "A thoroughly modern opera: Robots enter a new frontier," just out by writer Gregory Lamb in the Christian Science Monitor. Through his interviews with the creative team, Lamb helps to explicate the many layers of meaning in the technological wizardry of Death and the Powers. Lamb writes, "all this technology, some …
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Opera of the Future 