In the run-up to the April 16 world premiere of The Success of Failure (or, The Failure of Success), Cynthia Hopkins and her team have posted some great videos on YouTube. First, there’s the delightfully corny trailer with its old-fashioned anxiety-provoking lead-in: “The Sun is burning out! The Earth is under attack! And only one suicidally depressed alcoholic can save the Druoc race!”
And on a more serious note, Hopkins sits down to discuss just what she’s after with the latest of her “multimedia music performance extravaganzas” – The Success of Failure is the final piece in her Accidential Nostalgia trilogy. One reference point for the title, she says, is the miracle of human life as being the result of a “vast number of catastrophic failures” that came before in the history of the planet and even the universe.
Hopkins et al arrive in Minneapolis today to work out the last elements of the piece on the McGuire stage; we hope to post some snapshots and notes on their rehearsals here in the coming days.
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