NECESSARY MONSTERS

by Carla Kihlstedt and Rafael Osés

West Coast Premiere
Directed by Rinde Eckert & Carla Kihlstedt
Produced by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Role: The Collector

Cast and Production Team: Matthias Bossi, Denmo Ibrahim, Dina Maccabee, Michael Mellender, Freddi Price, Rob Reich, Theresa Wong, George Hurd, Gregory T. Huhn, Anna Singer, Allen Willner, Alice Wu

“A contemporary song cycle based on Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges’ Book of Imaginary Beings, Necessary Monsters is a psychological safari that encounters some of the chimeras living in the fertile landscape of our collective minds, and which thrive on the sustenance of shared experience. Each song is a manifestation of a different imaginary creature that reflects an aspect of our complicated humanness. Narrated by a writer inhabited by these creatures, they parade out of her mind one by one in the course of a sleepless and delirious night. Among the beings that visit her are the Squonk, who weeps incessantly, the Nisna, a half-finished being complete in its incompleteness, and Odradek, an assemblage of detritus left over from past lives that will outlast us all. This is a small yet singular selection of the imaginary beings that have helped human beings to dream, all as envisioned by a single human being.” (Art Practical)