S04E04: Aliana de la Guardia & Julia Noulin-Mérat, Co-Artistic Directors

Ensemble pianist Tae Kim sits down with Aliana de la Guardia & Julia Noulin-Mérat, Co-Artistic Directors of Guerilla Opera to unpack Dreamwalker and chat about the Guerilla Underground and other upcoming events and artistic content!

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Tae Kim: Hello Guerillas. This is episode four season four of Guerilla Opera Podcast. My name is Tae Kim, ensemble pianist and I’ll be your host for this episode. Today our own Guerilla Opera’s artistic directors Aliana de la Guardia and Juilia Noulin-Mérat are back to discuss the recent Dreamwalker experience and the future projects of guerilla opera.

Thank you for joining us today. So what did you think about the Dreamwalker experience?

Aliana de la Guardia: I would love to hear from Julia first!

Julia Noulin-Merat: Yea. So Aliana and I had very different experiences because I was only able to partiake remotely via zoom whereas Aliana was at the heart of it all, you know, in the middle of the action. So in terms of the process leading up to it it was interesting because it was a lot of sending pictures and on zoom watching some of the tech, and talking about it. So I had a sense of what we were about to present, but actually not at all - is what I realized once I watched it live it was so much more magical and amazing than I could even imagine, in the sense that I saw both in separate sequencing but I didn't see a run-through of how it was interwoven into one evening which I thought was very successful. It felt like one big show and I thought that was very strong and it kind of immediately drew you in. So in terms of that aspect, I caught myself watching it too and being like “oh wait I’m still supposed to be chatting about it, or posting things in the conversation,” and I think that’s also part of the beauty of the live element right? It’s like you don’t even know and you get to kind of notice all the little details and all the little sub-layering, which is why we perform live and I think we capture that beautifully. It’s like not one performance is the same. I really loved also seeing people’s reactions in the chat feature. There was that little, i’m gonna call it, “joke” where at one point they were like: “okay goodbye Aliana, this is your farewell party” and half of the people on the chat were like: “where is she going?!” (laughs)

Aliana: I got like five messages at the exact time, they were like: “wait what” and my phone was like bloom bloom bloom (phone notification sounds).

Julia: Yea. no absolutely. What I also really enjoyed is that we not only did the performance live, but we had feedback from everyone, so it really felt like a communal experience. But then the next day, to have the afterparty to unpack that with the audience, was really great. To actually have them ask the artists like: “oh how did you do that?” or “what were you thinking?” or “I really like that moment” and things like that. I think that was also super fun. I think something that we are all missing during this pandemic is feeling close to everyone and going through experiences together and I think what was really successful from this presentation was not only did we enjoy fantastic music and watch opera, but it felt very interactive and to me that’s the most amazing gift you can give to your community right? A full experience. So yea. That was my behind the scenes, into the scenes view. But Aliana, how was it for you in the heart of it all?

Aliana: Yea... I think the word opera is.. a stretch. (laughs)

Julia: That is why I was calling it an experience. Yea. (laughs)

Aliana: But I think that was the whole point, you know what I mean? It’s like we were less interested in exploring than what is opera, than actually what is operatic, you know? To me there’s really two... there’s a big difference between those two words. What’s operatic encapsulates an experience, and expansive experience, a spectacle experience, as opposed to what is opera and like trying to dissect what exactly that particular word means. That’s not interesting to me.

Well first of all I should start by saying, thank you so much to HC Media for allowing us to be there on their locations and property. They were extremely generous and really collaborative and they were, you know… We’re an ambitious group and we come up with crazy ideas and they were really great at brainstorming. They gave us staff and they gave us warmth and generosity and we really just can't thank them enough.

We're still in Dreamwaker, in a way, because we’re still filming part of the short film that’s Ophelia’s Life Dream. But to be in the middle of Dreamwalker Live was so chartatic. It was work. I was working, and it was in the best way, and everybody was there and we were working really collaboratively as we have in the past and maybe even a little bit differently because this was more of an experimental theatre experience. It was kind of a little bit moving. The parts were more moving and there was less rigidity to it in a way. I thought it was nice and honestly for the time we’re in, it was a nice release. You know, to not be in something so structured and rigid was fine by me (laughs). Everybody else was great at flying by the seat of their pants to build it that fast. We got in there that Tuesday. We basically rehearsed it, teched it Tuesday evening. Then we were in there Wednesday morning with me, and then they teched it Wednesday evening, and then we basically rehearsed it all day Thursday and filmed it so that they could do their overlay graphics so that we could premiere it as if live. We did this Saturday Night Live sort of trick where we filmed it ahead of time and then actually aired it later, but it was live. We did it all in one take, even all the camera angles, everything, that was all one take, one continuous thing, one continuous flow. I really liked that the performance as if it was live it felt like theatre even though it was all for cameras. The choreography between me and the cameras was all super cool and it was really enjoyable to do it. I think you’ll notice in the Dreamwalker Live, there was a lot of rotation where the camera. I sort of circled each other and sometimes the light too. The very first shot as I'm exiting, you see Keithlyn moving the light one way and the cameras moving the other way and I'm sort of going in between them. At the end of Ophelia’s Life Dream, they talk about rotations, you know? One hundred revolutions around the sun and I’ll collapse or whatever. So in the choreography, we tried to put as many revolutions in as possible. So when I’m dancing with the balloon I’m turning, I’m going around the camera this way, Keithlyn is going around me - there’s a lot of choreography that made it feel very like live theatre that I thought was really enjoyable. Super super cool. Laineis always really fun, so....

Tae: The transition was so smooth to the point where we thought Aliana was leaving us, you’re not leaving us are you?

Aliana: No (chuckles) that was actually my idea, because (laughs) I really wanted the two pieces to be connected. I thought part of the virtuosity of the evening should be going directly from one to the other without a blackout and a scene change and all this like theatrey kind of bullshit. I said: “well how do we get from one to the other?” and the character Ophelia is supposed to be a woman at a crossroads going through something hard. At one point I just blurted out “Laine, why don’t we just say ‘bye Aliana, have a good time, you’re not artistic director anymore, you’re retiring.’” We just made the situation where like me, Aliana is playing herself, retiring from Guerilla opera. A lot of Lane’s work it’s grounded in reality and I said “what's more real than playing me, you know?” In fashioning this situation around it, and so, that was fun.

Tae: Confused me, that's for sure, a lot of watches for sure. What were you happy about and what do you think you could have improved upon with this experience?

Aliana: I think in general I was really happy with how it came out. I was happy to be working. I was super happy with the team, it was a really wonderful experience, everyone worked really really well together. I wish we had more rehearsal time. Isn’t that always the wish? But even, I think, if we had one more day we could have done much more detailed work: physically and with the floor pattern and everything. I think we had a really good group that knew how to work really fast and so that was a real benefit. But you know, it’s just how things go. You work really hard and you always wish you had more rehearsal time in the end. So maybe we didn’t need more reh.. But I really felt like four more hours or two more hours we could have done something so spec… just detailed, you know? Much more detailed, which is always what we’re trying to do.

Julia: In terms of the experience for me, I know it sounds a little odd but, I would love to do, it’s so rewarding for the audience to be able to interact, to chat with during the productions. Something that felt so almost also very eerie for me in the Emergence concert is, I wish there was a way for the performers to hear the applause, or to have that other. Of course they can read the comment after the performance and things like that, but I feel like that is the one hiccup for me is like: how do you get to breathe together? And of course we can’t (laughs) but finding a way for the performers to give that back to them as well.

Tae: And so what’s on the plate for November?

Julia: On November 13, which is Friday the 13, we are launching our Guerilla Opera Underground and it will run for a month. The idea behind it is a kind of speakeasy where each week we will drop new content material. So that as a performer, you can... I’m sorry… whoo! - as an audience member (laughs) you can go back multiple times and have various experiences. Whether it’s behind the scenes insights on the productions, or it’s actually the production, or new work that we have developed, it makes it a jam-packed speakeasy of all things Guerilla, which we’re very excited about for people to get to experience.

Aliana: So the way we're thinking about this thing is that Dreamwalker is sort of like an exhibition. Like an art exhibition with pieces in it. And so, we performed it live and that was one part of the exhibition, and now we're making it digital and it’s a new evolution of the exhibition where you see digital representations of each of these pieces that we created. The exhibition evolves the longer it’s alive, the more it evolves. So like Julia said, each week we release a bonus track. The first week you're going to see Dreamwalker Live and Ophilia’s LIfe Dream, the short film we’re still making, and the video representation of Papillon. Those are the pieces that make Dreamwalker. It’s possible in a year we’ll do Dreamwalker again, and maybe we’ll add another piece to it. The ideas is that these programs evolve, and change. As we as performers change, and the world changes around us, the program could be different, or it could be the same with tiny little differences, you know, or you know we perform Dreamwalker outside and the screen is like fifty feet tall or something. Something’s gonna change…

Julia: Or with an audience!

Aliana: Or with an audience but yea so that’s the ideal - it’s an evolving exhibition, it changes, and so it goes from live to digital.

The way it works is that you sign up online on Eventbrite. You pay a ten dollar cover charge like you would at any dive bar and then you’re signed up on eventbrite, and you can come back as many times as you want. You can come back every week just for that one ten bucks, and you’ll see the evolution, all the pieces that we’re adding, and the full picture of what is Dreamwalker right now. Ater you sign up on Eventbrite you get the special page and a password to get into that page which is why we're calling it a speakeasy because you need a password to get in. (laughs) So it’s like a special webpage, it has all our content on it, you need a password to get in, and in order to get that password you have to sign up through Eventbrite.

Tae: So who’s making the drinks?

Aliana We haven't thought of the quarantinis yet.

Julia: (laughs)

Aliana: We’ll get there. We do two underground happy hours and those will have signature cocktails and (laughs) we’ll all be sipping and talking about Dreamwalker and whatever together, because I’m sure we’ll all be wanting to unpack a lot of things.

Tae: Beautiful. So what else is happening in November?

Julia: This November, something else that we are launching, is our Writing Collective. They’re [participants] gonna be meeting every two weeks for six months, and the idea for this collective, the emphasis is really on developing your own libretto. Alot of the applicants actually pitched us what they’re working on. Some of them have an idea and they kind of want to dive in. And then, other writers, they started working on one and now they really just need a space where they can keep working on it. The idea is that our participants were not just picked for who they are as artists, but also how they can contribute to the collective, meaning give each other feedback as they’re creating their librettos.

Tae: Very cool, very cool.

Aliana: It’s sort of like a think tank, and actually I think they meet for eight months, November to June, so…

Julia: Yea eight months, for some reason I thought, okay, yup...

Tae: The longer the better.

Aliana: I also want to add that the writing collective is specifically created specifically for people who are trying to complete text for a work. This is different from our libretto writing Guerilla Lab, our libretto writing Guerilla Lab is more process oriented and it’s giving people tools in order to be able to write. So you don’t actually actively be completing a work if you wanna just take a creative writing workshop that’s geared towards opera librettI and new work development, that’s the one. The writing lab is like an eight month long think tank helping them, helping each other to create and complete as much as possible of a work.

Tae: So what is this Guerilla lab that you’re speaking of?

Aliana: Yea, so it sort of came from last summer. We really wanted to have more workshops, intensive workshops, you know? I take a lot of intensive workshops, as a physical theatre performer, and I was like: “well why can't we have something similar where somebody can just come, and over the course of two weeks, or over the course of however many weeks, learn a skill, or learn something about enough?” And so we have these Guerilla Labs which are professional development workshop for artists, or people who are arts-inclined. Right now, there’s that libretto writing workshop, which as of now is a six week intensive. Julia’s doing a workshop on immersive and alternative production design. I do one on movement and physical theatre focusing on strength and physicality, and then there may even be another one but we’re not totally sure. That’s a surprise.

Julia: We’re still cooking on that…

Aliana: Yea we’re still cooking.

Julia: But the idea is that it’s like when you go workout at the gym. This is an artist gym, so you’re working on yourself, we’re all at different levels, and it really helps you expand your tools. If you’re just curious about something else within the artform that’s a great way to explore it as well. I remember Aliana, you had a wonderful instrumentalist that joined your movement class and that was a great way for him to kind of find a way to.. how to perform and do movement while actually playing an instrument.

Aliana: Or even just executing choreography, because you know so many composers are writing theatrical music, you know what I mean? They write concert theatre which requires the instrumentalist to maybe sometimes not even play the instrument but just execute a series of choreography. Like how do you do that? How do you execute this choreography with confidence? How do you think about how you’re moving in this space once your instrument is removed? So that was fascinating and I think too in the libretto lab, there were multimedia artists, there were composers, there were writers, there were filmmakers, there were all like…

Julia: Novelists!

Aliana: ... a bunch.. of novelists! Like such a variety of artists that were attracted to this kind of work. So the Guerilla Lab is definitely for anyone and everyone who is fascinated and interested and wants to really learn more.

Tae: That’s awesome.

Julia: The production one came because in the libretto writing workshop this summer, I did one of the classes where I was actually talking to a lot of librettists and composers and talking to them about how to deal with design, or how to makes suggestions in text without being literal, but also how to engage the other artists working on your pieces. So It stemmed from that to create a class, where as a composer, you know, how do you also create a visual language, and not just music.

Tae: This is very exciting. So if that’s the case, what also are we doing for future projects?

Julia: Even though we are all quarantining and staying at home as much as possible, we’re still moving ahead with creating new pieces. There’s been a lot of meetings and libretto readings and things like that, in terms of the zoom platform, because at least we can still keep meeting.
We’re now at the phase where two of our pieces - we’re actually meeting with the composers and the directors fleshing out: “okay what if we present this digital versus in person?” It’s important to think about the different alternatives. But at this time we’re not putting anything on the calendar for in-person performances.

Julia: I should say too that we’re not putting anything on the calendar for larger casted performances. Our larger works are generally not that large for opera. It’s four singers and four instrumentalists, but that’s still a lot of people to have in a room and we would have to have quite a large room in order to do that safely, socially distanced, and to have four singers together in a room, even just doing a concert reading. We’ve instituted some protocols. For example, anytime we go on site anywhere and have to perform together or do something together, we all get covid tests. We have self-assessment tests that we do, check-ins that we do via survey monkey every day that we are on set, and we’re about to add temperature checks. We were supposed to add it before but the thermometer I bought was defective so I had to return it and get another one.

Julia: Showbiz! (laughs)

Aliana: You can cut that out, it’s not that interesting.

Julia: Yea (laughs)

Aliana: (laughs) Or you can leave it in. I don’t know!

But adding to Aliana’s point, right now the spaces that we’re in have to be for five people. It’s not just the performers but for example, Keithyn, production coordinator, she has to be there to light the performances. So it’s kind of playing, I wanna call it a tetris of people, of who gets to work when to make the shows happen,

Tae: Lot of moving parts here, lot of moving parts.

Julia: It depends on the venue and for that particular venue, HC Media, they were really uncomfortable having more than five of our people. I said “okay we won’t have more than five people,” and so we really had to think about that. The works you’re really gonna see us performing live or even digitally are gonna be works for a much smaller cast. But we’re still developing the larger works, and having conversations with the composers, or the libretto readings that we can do via Zoom. We’re doing as much as we can to keep the fire under those operas. Whereas some operas, we have our - basically completed, or almost complete and those are just holding until we can perform operas safely and then we’re gonna hit the ground running.

Julia: Yea. I mean this summer we received a full score, and now we’re just waiting (laughs) to be able to perform it, so.

Tae: I can’t wait for that day. I’ll be honest, that will be nice, very nice. So anything else to add?

Aliana: I’ll just say very quickly, in addition to these developing works, we have another covid experiment program. It’s not gonna be called Dreamwalker, it’s gonna be called something else. I haven’t thrown out any ideas of what it’s called but, but it’s gonna be great. It’s gonna be super cool, because I’m great at naming things, or so I like to say (laughs). I like to say I’m great at naming things, but it’s going to feature a new work by Bahar Rohyaee and Deniz Khateri as well as a work by Anahita Abbasi. So the new work by Bahar Rohyaee and Deniz Khateri is a monologue that they’re writing for soprano and electronics, and the work by Anahita Abbasi is for percussion and baritone, which will be performed by Mike Williams, our wonderful percussionist, and also my husband, and Brian Church, whose been a member of our ensemble for a really long time, you’ve seen him in all our operas. There will be an additional piece that will be for percussion solo, but it’s for a vocalizing percussionist, so he’s playing and he’s speaking this story at the same time. That will be an interesting program, and maybe there will be another surprise on there but we’re not entirely sure, you’re just going to have to follow us. You'll see, I’m all about surprises! (laughs)

Julia: Absolutely. I would also like to add that every second Saturday of the month, we have these community drop-ins with various artists that we collaborate with, or from Aliana and myself.

Aliana: And in December, Deniz Khateri is coming back and she will have an amazing shadow puppet workshop. Which I think I would also like to do.

Julia: (laughs)

Aliana: … to like, attend and do it. And you’ve seen her work with us. She directed and did the animation for Papillon. She’s extremely talented, and very experienced. So that should be really super interesting.

Tae: A lot on the plate. A lot on the plate. Well sounds very exciting! Even during this during this very difficult time.

Julia: We’re certainly busy.

Well thank you for joining us and hope to see you soon. Ya?

Julia: Ya.

Aliana: Thank you.

Tae: Thank you

Julia: Thank you.

Tae: And this concludes this episode for Guerilla Opera podcast. Join us for Guerilla Underground on the 13th and community drop in, movement and performance performance with Aliana de la Guardia on the 14th. And of course if you enjoyed this podcast, please like and subscribe and support us on Patreon. Thank you for tuning in till the end.