Bluebeard's Castle: Dreamscaping

Dreamscaping

Bluebeard’s Castle has been on the short list for Des Moines Metro Opera for many years, as has been an opportunity to collaborate with international artist and digital image composer Oyoram. From his studio in Des Moines, his work has been seen around the world from Paris to Tokyo to Las Vegas. Together with acclaimed director Kristine McIntyre, Bluebeard’s Castle comes to the stage as it has likely never been seen before. McIntyre recently sat down with Oyoram to discuss progress on their work together. Below is Oyoram’s reflection on his creative process.

I think the term “visual composer” fits my work. It’s a visual medium but it doesn’t have a box like “film maker.” It’s a more abstract way of working with the image. There’s no duration to it, there is just imagery composition, maybe something more similar to a music composer,who is not necessarily using the text as a backbone for the narrative.

I always find music as a natural ally, more than the text. The text has a constraint that the music doesn’t. For me, the images and the music are siblings—it’s the same family. I like the idea of working with music.

When we go to the movies, we want to believe in what we see. In the theatre we are much freer. Years ago I remember looking over the shoulders of children who were playing elementary video games like Pac Man and thinking how wonderful, that through this poor assembling of pixels, they can imagine the whole world. In a way, this is what the theatre is: we don’t have anything, we have to imagine. And we don’t need to see it as a comparison of any reality. We are somewhere else.

There are two tools that I have decided to use in our production: Unreal Engine, which is a technology platform we are using in virtual production, and Artificial Intelligence, which is the second side of the same thing. Inside this virtual studio, I can create a 3D universe that can grab from everywhere but attach more to visual language, to dreams.

We spend eight hours a night slipping in and out of dream. We have access to this visual language, so having it outside and being able to work with it, it’s just a gift and I’m so happy and very excited. Plunging into the unconscious mind, this immersive mind trip, is interesting in this project. How to make the audience participate in this dream? This conversation between what we have in the mind and what we see in reality—this is the wonderful challenge that we have.

For me, Bluebeard is a very privileged entrance point because it’s the dream area. You have a dream, you wake up, you remember it, and when you start to understand it, you kill it. Because you want suddenly to put your reason inside, to put the wild animal in a box. And it will die. Disappear. Vanish. A few hours after you want to tell the story that was so incredible, you don’t find any words because you don’t have it anymore.

Exploration is a dangerous place because you are first in something. We are exploring, and this involves excitement and anxiousness at the same time. Those two create what I call joy. The answers are encapsulated in the opera that we are telling, in the storytelling, in the music. We don’t need to go anywhere else.

This visually stunning production of Béla Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle makes its long-awaited company premiere running for four performances July 1– 22.

Oyoram, digital image composer for Bluebeard's Castle