The Lab’s Associate Director Emma Jaster directs Lady M opera in New York

The Lab’s Associate Director Emma Jaster directs Lady M opera in New York

Lady M
Lady M directed by The Lab's Associate Director Emma Jaster

The Lab’s Associate Director Emma Jaster takes the reins to direct her bold vision of Ethan Heard and Jacob Ashworth’s original adaptation, featuring a tight ensemble cast of six singers and six players. Daniel Schlosberg’s arrangement explodes the haunting world of Verdi’s score with electronics, live processing, and a complete sonic reimagining of the witches’ voices.

Lab Associate Director Emma Jaster takes the reins to direct her bold vision of Ethan Heard and Jacob Ashworth’s original adaptation, featuring a tight ensemble cast of six singers and six players. Daniel Schlosberg’s arrangement explodes the haunting world of Verdi’s score with electronics, live processing, and a complete sonic reimagining of the witches’ voices.

Emma Jaster

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“The witch-hunt grew in a social environment where the 'better sorts' were living in constant fear of the 'lower classes' who could certainly be expected to harbor evil thoughts because […] they were losing everything they had […] The battle against magic has always accompanied the development of capitalism, to this very day.” -- Caliban and the Witch; Women, The Body, and Primitive Accumulation, Silvia Federici

“In Shakespeare’s day, “witch” was a relatively new way to label a woman whose skills and way of life were a threat to capital, control, and the mass privatization of what had previously been common land. Due to a population dip and the desire for laborers, women’s bodies were harnessed for reproduction and the myth of the fragile white female was crafted to keep women doing the unpaid labor of reproducing and caring for the paid laborers of industry. Today many like Lady M have sided with the white patriarchy at the expense of their sisters and the world. We have amassed power and wealth beyond our ancestral grandmothers’ wildest wishes.

“During the past decade, the richest 1% of people captured around half of all new global wealth. Since 2020 and over these pandemic years, the top 1% have managed to seize nearly two-thirds of the $42 trillion in newlycreated wealth. This is nearly twice as much money as gained over the same period by the remaining 99% of humanity.” -- World Economic Forum, Oxfam International report, January 2023
“If the goal of your feminism is to get equal power with white men, you’re going to have to oppress a bunch of people.” -- Rachel Cargle, Washington Post

Like Lady M, we have a choice as to what we do with the power we have.

“Only when Mother Earth is well can we, her children be well” - Landback Manifesto
"An utterly original recreation of Verdi’s opera that places Lady Macbeth’s doubts and moral quandaries at its center..." - Oussama Zahr, New York Times

 

Emma Jaster, Director of Lady M

MORE ABOUT LADY M

 Emma Jaster is an internationally trained director, choreographer, and facilitator based in the U.S.  She has led projects with U-Theatre in Taiwan, the Natanakairali Institute in India, Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center, LaMama’s Directors’ Symposium, and the Grotowski-based Teatr Zar in Poland.  She has been granted artist residencies at ODC in San Francisco, HERE Arts and BAX in NYC, and artist fellowships from the DCCAH and the Asian Cultural Council. She has led workshops at IDEO, MoMA, Cornell Tech, University of Louisville, and Georgetown University in everything from body language to play.  She is the founder and director of the international artist residency @mamaisamaker. Grounding her life practice in social justice and the cultivation of peace, she believes in the power of art to help us listen more deeply and love more openly.

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