As we prepare to open our sold-out run of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater this week at the Jubilee Auditorium, we asked director Jennifer Tarver about her Edmonton roots and how she is approaching this unique piece.
What is your connection to the city of Edmonton?
JT: My parents moved to Edmonton from New York when I was 3, and I grew up here. My mother founded the Dance Program at Grant MacEwan and was the co-artistic director of the Alberta Contemporary Dance Company. My father founded the play-wrighting program at the University of Alberta.
I directed my first production at the Edmonton Fringe festival. Edmonton still pulls at my heartstrings, and I love coming back.
With a background in theatre and music, how do you approach both aspects of a musical work?
“We work together to ensure that every movement, as well as every note sung, is tied to intention and narrative.”
JT: I have a very close collaboration with choreographer Susanna Hood. Our work is very intertwined and we integrate our thinking in both movement and acting with the dancers and singers alike. We work together to ensure that every movement, as well as every note sung, is tied to intention and narrative.
Your practice is grounded in movement. How do you approach a piece like Stabat Mater?
JT: I was drawn to the Stabat Mater firstly because of the sublime music. Then, I was struck by the nature of the 13th century text that the music is set to. For me the text is about the body and the experience of tactile empathy. In other words, the desire to inhabit the physical sensations of another human being as a way towards an empathic religious or spiritual connection. The speaker of these words is asking the Virgin Mary directly to share her physical pain with him. So integrating movement and the bodies of dancers was inspired by this aspect of the original text.
This piece isn’t considered a traditional “opera”. Has that been challenging?
JT: It has been very freeing actually! Susanna and I have loved creating a narrative journey for this quartet of performers that is a new response to the music and text. It is much more challenging than directing a piece with scenes that are already part of the piece, for sure, but there is a unique satisfaction in this type of process.
What can audiences expect on opening night?
JT: Hopefully something that will move them and that will shift their perspective on the experience of witnessing a piece of Baroque chamber music.