The New York City-based, critically acclaimed Phantom Limb Company (PLC), founded by composer Erik Sanko and visual artist Jessica Grindstaff, uses marionette puppetry to probe issues of contemporary life. PLC's newest endeavor is about the explorer Ernest Shackleton and his experience of the Antarctic landscape. Committed to portraying the reality of the continent, PLC proposes a research trip to Antarctica to capture auditory field recordings and to analyze the quality of the light and its relationship with water, ice, and air.
The light and sound of Antarctica are at the heart of this project. The setting, designed by Grindstaff and inhabited by marionettes and other large-scale installation characters, will be a tableau vivant, or pre-cinema moving picture. In preparation, Grindstaff and her lighting designer will conduct a careful investigation of glacial forms and Antarctic light involving video and photographic documentation, personal observation, and illustrated and written interpretation of the light and ice for tone, hue, movement and the potential emotional response they elicit. Back in the U.S., they will create spectacular representations from these findings using ecological inflatable construction that is both portable for touring and symbolic of the impermanence of this polar region. The music will be composed by Sanko in collaboration with several notable sound artists, in particular the Grammy award-winning Kronos Quartet. Sanko?s first priorities are to consider both the perspective of the landscape and that of its visitors: a call-and-response between host and guest. Using recording equipment in collaboration with an NSF field representative to ensure responsible sonic documentation, Sanko will capture the sounds of Antarctica?s wind, ice, and fauna. Through the unpredictable and unfamiliar quality of these sounds, PLC will conceive a musical environment that is as layered as Antarctica itself.
PLC is already scheduled to take this production global, playing trans-continentally in opera houses and approx. 1000-seat theaters while engaging in educational outreach within the cities that it performs. Workshops, lectures, and courses will be led in schools associated with the performance venue and in the vicinity.
