Patria (theatre)


Patria is a cycle of music-theatre works written over a period of 40 years by R. Murray Schafer. The title derives from the Latin word for "homeland". The cycle is framed by a prologue The Princess of the Stars and an epilogue And Wolf Shall Inherit the Moon, and includes ten other major works. All twelve of the works place heavy emphasis on the location of performance. The third production in the series, , was adapted into the film Carnival of Shadows. The cycle is in a continual state of evolution as participants of And Wolf Shall Inherit the Moon return to perform the work each summer, revising the content of the performance to accommodate the current environment of the site and needs of the performance community.

History

In 1966, Schafer originally conceived of Patria as a bipartite work, where the two halves would be performed simultaneously on separate stages. Instead, the two halves became Patria 1 and 2. By 1979, Schafer began to think of Patria as a cycle of six works. By 1990, the cycle settled into its current form of a dozen works.

Parts

;Patria — The Prologue, The Princess of the Stars
;Patria 1 — Wolfman
;Patria 2 — Requiems for the Party Girl
;Patria 3 — The Greatest Show
;Patria 4 — The Black Theatre of Hermes Trismegistos
;Patria 5 — The Crown of Ariadne
;Patria 6 — Ra
;Patria 7 — Asterion
;Patria 8 — The Palace of the Cinnabar Phoenix
;Patria 9 — The Enchanted Forest
;Patria 10 — The Spirit Garden
;Patria — The Epilogue: And Wolf Shall Inherit the Moon