Etudes / Estebanico

In conjunction with the Center for the Study of the Southwest, the composer Paul Pinto is in residency at Texas State.  He is researching and workshopping a new opera/song cycle and needs actor/singers for a public presentation of the piece.  This is a unique opportunity for students to interact with a renowned artist and experience the evolution of a new work.  

Description of Project:
Workshop: Etudes / Estevanico.  An operatic spectacle for singers, orchestra, dancers, and electronic media spanning millennia.  Inspired by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca's surrealist 16th Century odyssey across the modern US-Mexican border.  

Workshop Dates/Times:

• Monday, 10/12, 6:30 to 10:00, Theater 206
• Tuesday, 10/13, 6:30 to 10:00, Theater 206
• Wednesday, 10/14, 6:30 to 10:00, Taylor Murphy 101

Full consideration for performers will be given to people who register by 5:00 pm on Monday, September 14

Actors/singers/stage managers/tech Needed:
Workshop performance and reading of Act 2 of Estebanico, written and directed by Paul Pinto

Looking for committed and interested artists and students to be part of a five-day on-your-feet music-theatre workshop about early (Spanish) American mythology. The work centers Estebanico, a young man from Morocco, enslaved, shipped across the Atlantic, who then became a key protagonist in a four-person journey from Tampa through native Texas communities to Mazatlan starting in 1528. Themes include enslavement, the borderlands, migration, healing, digging, community, unfree labor, indigenous authority, Afro-Latino erasure, manumission, early culture-contact, and (mis)translation

Need to have:

• Four singing actors who are excellent movers and feel comfortable playing some percussion and delivering text in Spanish, English and perhaps other languages they don't know
• 6-20 additional singing actors who move well
• Stage Manager (paid position)

Would also like to invite:

• Instrumentalists/improvisers (especially percussionists) who are interested in creating character, story and soundscape with their instruments
• Video, lighting and props designers who can work independently and like to generate quickly

Dates and Times:
Rehearsals and public performance take place during the week of Oct. 12 to 16.

• The rehearsals are Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday (October 12-14), 6:30 to 10:00
• The preview is Thursday, October 15 at 7:00 PM, Theater 206
• The Wittliff Performance is Friday, October 7 at 4:00pm on the 7th floor of the Allkek Library 

Contact:
If you would like to join the workshop please click the “Register” link above.  For more information, reach out to Dr. John Mckiernan-Gonzales and Professor Kevin Byrne and Dr. Dr. John Mckiernan-Gonzalez.  The deadline is 5:00 pm on Friday, September 14, so Paul Pinto and the organizers can integrate the actors into the process.  

Paul Pinto, creator and composer, hailed by the Wire as  “one of the most exceptional composers in new music, with a sensibility that can handle deadly seriousness and wicked humor”, Paul Pinto creates and preforms multi-disciplinary opera-theater and installation.  Some highlights include Patriots with Jeff Young,  Whiteness with Kameron Neal, an ongoing re-arrangement of Robert Ashley's Perfect Lives, and his first opera Thomas Paine in Violence. He's a founding member of the Collectives Thingy and Varispeed and has performed internationally and on and off Broadway. 

I often spend months dabbling in self-portraiture that sparks intimate dialogue about identity. As an interdisciplinary performer and wordy operatic sermonizer, I'm a curious and exploratory artist obsessed with choral armies, floating heads, verbal gymnastics, immersive and durational encounters, subtly sexual reverb, strong (maybe manipulative) gestures, hyperbole and biting self-reflection. Inspirations and influences including borderlands, people who work in bodegas, the [great] state of New Jersey, Boyz II Men, Raven Chacon, The Ink Spots, Outer Space, immigrants, and the American public school system. For more information about Paul Pinto, please visit his personal website.