VERY FERAL TODAY

“VERY FERAL TODAY” (2025). 70 minutes. Performance installation / staged concert. light, sound, space, pre recorded audio, live speaking, wall text. created and performend by Duo Étrange, Marcus Shields, Frank Oliva. June 2025. Marcus Shields/ Frank Oliva/ Sahara von Hattenberger/ Vanessa Croome. Gallery 311, West Chelsea Building.

VERY FERAL TODAY

a theatre piece for voice and cello

June 21 , 22, 24, 25 2025

Gallery 311, CHELSEA NYC

MARCUS SHIELDS DIRECTOR / SOUND / VIDEO

FRANK OLIVA LIGHT / SPACE

VANESSA CROOME SOPRANO / PERFORMANCE

SAHARA von HATTENBERGER CELLO / PERFORMANCE

VERY FERAL

TODAY

VERY FERAL TODAY

I

Very Feral Today is a staged concert work for voice, cello, and pre-recorded text that investigates the act of listening, the intimacy of live performance, and the tension between personal narrative and musical abstraction. Developed collaboratively by director Marcus Shields, Duo Étrange (Sahara von Hattenberger, cello; Vanessa Croome, voice), and designer Frank Oliva, the piece blends recital and performance art, constructing an experience that invites the audience to forgo text and musical narrative and rather use the personal lives and revelations of the performers as the primary dramatic context.

II

The core of the performance is a recital of contemporary works for cello and voice. Rather than present the program in traditional concert format, we chose to frame the music with pre-recorded interstitial material. This audio was composed of documentary-style fragments: personal stories, reflections, found sound, and interview excerpts from the performers.

To support flow and continuity, we also created short, original musical compositions that played beneath the spoken text. These musical bridges were designed to connect key centers between each musical work, creating a tonal and emotional through-line.

This structure, musical performance punctuated by intimate, pre-recorded voices, had a subtle but powerful effect. During these interstitial moments, the performers stood silently on stage, listening with the audience. This shared listening produced a gently dislocating, poetic rupture: a sense of remove and reflection that deepened the immediacy of the live material. The effect was simultaneously distancing and intensifying. We were all, including the speakers themselves, bearing witness to the act of disclosure.

III

During and after the performance, it became clear that the piece centers on themes of parents and children - the ongoing negotiation between embracing and distancing oneself from family, upbringing, and inherited narratives. This struggle deeply informs how we perform and create music. It manifests not only in the content of the text but in the subconscious level of the music itself: what we repress, what we inherit, what we resist, and what we let go of, all become audible.

Future versions of the piece would re-record all of the documentary audio to reflect the performers’ present moment. The piece is meant to evolve with them. It is always a snapshot of what they are thinking about or struggling with now. The material can be translated into different languages and tailored to the specific context of any venue, city, or audience. This elasticity allows the piece to stay alive.

MUSIC BY TAVENER / GROVES / LANG/ FRIDMAN / WOOLF / BACH / FONG / HILLBORG

i AUDIO DIRECTOR’S NOTE

Good evening, everyone. My name is Marcus Shields, and I'd like to welcome you to Gallery 311 for tonight's performance of Very Feral Today. This piece is a collaboration between the instrumental ensemble Duo Étrange and the artists Frank Oliva and myself. I first met Vanessa and Sahara in January 2025 at a concert they gave here in New York City. Watching them, I was struck by the nature of their collaboration.

It was like watching a conversation, sometimes light, sometimes profound, between two close friends. That kind of dialogue is inherent to music written for cello and voice, but their way of performing made it feel unusually intimate. They made music the way I talk to my best friend. Very Feral Today is a piece about listening. I mean that in the broadest, most open sense.

We chose to present the work in this format to shift it away from the conventions of a concert and towards something closer to performance art. Each piece on the program has a text, and that text is crucial to the composition, but we've decided to withhold it. Instead, we invite you to experience the music and its presentation with openness and curiosity. The piece is part portrait, part documentary, but above all it's an attempt to capture the quality of these artists.

how they make music, how they work together, and what it feels like to be in that process with them.