December 1-5, 1998 • Theater Artaud • San Francisco
Photo: Marion Gray The first week of December, 1998, Pamela Z performed Parts of Speech, a large scale interdisciplinary solo performance work using extended vocal performance, live electronic sound processing, found text, sampled sounds of speech fragments, and projected still and moving images. The soundscore was performed live and included samples triggered with a wireless MIDI controller which allows the performer to manipulate sound by making physical gestures.
PARTS OF SPEECH is a performance work about language. Parts of speech focuses on the language of asking (begging), the changing language of gender, questioning, grammar (dialect), small talk, coercion, technology, and news (mass media). It examines and makes music of the subtleties of the human speaking voice. Pamela Z appears as narrator, news commentator, storyteller, and cantor in this word ritual. The audience finds themselves in the midst of an aural and visual landscape of queries they can answer in any way they choose. Parts of Speech is a grammer quiz made up entirely of trick questions
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