UMBRA

Umbra is a one-act multimedia micro-opera for soprano and piano with electronics and video. The core of the piece is a stream of consciousness operating in three modes, where the id, ego, and superego trigger different logics of response in the same person. This arrangement produces inner confusion and turmoil – desire, correction, command; impulse, self-defense, judgment – without a stable overriding point that could order it.

The titular umbra (Latin: shadow) denotes, in optics, the zone of full shadow: the result of the relation between three elements – the light source, the occluding body, and the receiving surface (screen/observer). Umbra is not a mood of “darkness,” but a precise structure of occlusion: the place from which the source ceases to be fully visible. This triad becomes in the piece a model of the psyche: the impulse as the source, the normative filter as the occluder, and consciousness as the screen on which projections appear. In this sense “umbra” is also a metaphor for the Jungian shadow – contents that remain outside of insight; the system closes them off and pushes them into the zone of full shading, from where they continue to exert influence.

The piece was created during the pandemic and had its premiere during lockdown, without an audience. It is a lament and a record of a mental state confronting the ruthlessness of cause–effect law: without the promise of relief or consolation through narrative. It documents the pressure of the world at a moment of crisis – climatic, civilizational, epidemiological – as a perceptual and existential experience that transfers onto the apparatus of thought.

The stage is organized as a projection system. The protagonist is surrounded by three screens – “holograms” of herself – which multiply perspectives and reveal how one person can generate contradictory responses to the same event. The stream of consciousness here is cut and recomposed as if hacked: three instances seize the helm in short time segments, so the same thought returns in inconsistent versions.

Program:

• Anna Jędrzejewska, Agata Dyczko — Umbra
• world premiere

Performers:

• Aleksandra Klimczak — voice and electronic processing
• Anna Jędrzejewska — piano and electronics
• Laura Adel — video projections
• Agata Dyczko — direction
• Wojciech Stanisław Skowronek — libretto

Production:

• production: Wojciech Błażejczyk
• visual identity: Aleksandra Ołdak
• sound direction: Wojciech Błażejczyk

The Contemporary Music Space Hashtag Lab is co-financed by the Capital City of Warsaw.

The media patrons of the Contemporary Music Space Hashtag Lab are POLMIC.PL and Dwójka Polskie Radio.