WORK IN PROGRESS
Shelter, the Comic is a collaboration with writer and librettist Julie Salverson and composer Juliet Palmer, and is a modern day fable that tells the story of the birth of the atomic age: a thing that is at once powerfully beautiful while being a harbinger of unprecedented destruction and horror. First presented as a modern opera (produced by the Edmonton Opera in November 2012 and Tapestry Opera in Toronto in June 2013), Shelter: the Comic will extend the audience of the fable not only by presenting the story in a new medium, but by inviting new avenues of consideration through the addition of the guide or witness.
Since Prometheus stole fire from the Gods, we have flirted with the dangerous beauty of science. In this cartoon fable, the story of the outcome of harnessing atomic power is told in metaphor through the lives of a nuclear American family adrift in the atomic age. Optimistic newlyweds Thomas and Clare give birth to a daughter called Hope, who has an unnatural glow and who grows to sexual maturity too soon: virtually overnight. Afraid of what they have created, Thomas tries desperately to hide his daughter from outside eyes. He hires Lise Meitner (renowned Austrian physicist) to be Hope’s governess, and the young girl presses her teacher to explain the bewildering world of war and love. On the equivalent of Hope’s 21st birthday (mere weeks after her birth), a mysterious force draws a young man to her door. He is a pilot, with a destiny to fulfill.
