The Pathetic Planet
CCA Glasgow | 2024 | devised and crafted by Romi Sarfaty & Dale Williamson | Performed by Romi Sarfaty & Dale | Opera performances by Ilona Sofia Nastase | composed by Flynn Butler Fraser
An absurdist, operatic melodrama that explores themes of existential crisis, consumerism, desires, and shame. Made 95% from recycled materials and trash.
An ancient Ameoba pulsates in the warm rays of the smiling sun.
She sings to it “Please Amoeba, please be born!”
But in this galaxy, even the stars themselves are afraid to fall asleep and wake up in their worst nightmare, where bobbling heads spin and cackle, where smiles gape alongside our shameful pleasures, where skin sheds and reveals monstrous innards.
We tried to have it all and yet we’re trapped in this spiral of nothing, trapped in this futile selfhood, trapped in this multitude of reflections.
A chain of stick people holding hands,
empty shapes screaming
“It’s not at all traumatic to be a part of the picture”.
So please, join us in this operatic, absurdist melodrama.
Put on your hysteric smile.
Come along, let’s all try and act like it’s okay,
Everything is okay.
Everything is totally okay,
We are all so happy,
We love our life.
We love The Pathetic Planet.
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Do you know the story of the amoeba
Passed from mercury to mars, from mars to Pluto and from Pluto to the sun
To my hands, to hold, to hone, and to understand
It’s been here so long, so long to be misunderstood & unknown
I sang with the stars, they thought it could absorb the rays of the smiling sun.
And like little larva something would emerge
I can feel Its fragile hands and heart ,
The way it writhes and wriggles with a thousand possibilities.
Possibilities of breaking through the delusion,
To be apart of the abundance
To slot itself into the picture.
But I hold this fear, a sense of peril
that it wears an armour, a front to hide behind.
Is that an alarming indication
that it’s lacking something, incomplete
And thus it will falter and fail
to see the world.
The stars and the sun we sing and we plead
Please Amoeba, please be born
We’re sending all our harmonious hymns
We can’t wait to see your shape
