Animal Instincts
Ellen Welcker is launching her new poetry collection with collaborative “feral opera”
Ferociously untamed and femininely evocative, the fairytale-inspired voices of Spokane poet Ellen Welcker’s forthcoming collection The Pink Tablet are coming to life for an unusual collaborative performance.
A group of more than a dozen local artists are lending their talents to the staged production, a multimedia feast for the senses combining dance, song, spoken word, music and visual stage effects. Welcker calls the experimental mash-up a “feral opera.”
A “casual, visual circus” is another appropriate way to describe The Pink Tablet’s translation from page to stage, according to performance producer Rebecca Chadwell, an interdisciplinary artist who began helping Welcker after a brainstorming session over coffee several months ago.
Rather than a traditional poetry reading behind a mic, Welcker thought a live performance could better translate the collection’s theme, and would better align line with how she’s always heard the poems recited in her head. Thus, The Pink Tablet evolved into a collaboratively wild experience involving numerous other local creatives who are translating Welcker’s poetry into their chosen forms of expression.