Combining computer graphics, photographic projections, song, live performance, and dance with a musical score, the voluptuous extravaganzas known as New Musical Hybrids are often nonlinear explorations of a singular idea. George Coates, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson, and Martha Clarke... [more]

Combining computer graphics, photographic projections, song, live performance, and dance with a musical score, the voluptuous extravaganzas known as New Musical Hybrids are often nonlinear explorations of a singular idea. George Coates, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson, and Martha Clarke represent a theater that has emerged from avant-garde experiments -- the 'light-shows' from 1960s rock concerts and be-ins. New Musical Hybrids are aimed at a younger audience primed for new, music-driven theatrical modes not dependent upon narrative, characterization, or emotional subtleties. Musical Hybrids have evolved out of a shrinking Broadway musical comedy horizon as a catch-all category for a variety of new performance forms and works. By employing words as music or music as words, New Hybrids seek to create impressions that realign perceptions. Whether scrambling the contexts for sensory data or expanding their domain, artists evoke sound and image from both reality and the imagination, creating a new level of aesthetic awareness. George Coates sees his 'performance works,' which involve 'nonsense' chanting over a garbled music mix, as a relative of opera; the pieces are sung in manner indecipherable to most audiences. New Musical Hybrids are often subsidized works that, due to their limited popular appeal, will continue presenting their highly original, unorthodox performances to small houses. [show less]