BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
Sound, story, and movement come together in Labyrinth — Forest Collective’s dark dance-opera. The work had a sold-out debut in 2024, and has been re-imagined into a new performance experience in the corridors of the historic Abbotsford Convent.
Forest Collective artistic director Evan J Lawson (pictured above) composed music to tell the story of the Minotaur — the Greek mythological beast you will confront on your journey. Dancers and musicians bring the tale to life while electronic sound design helps you lose yourself in the tale.
Evan tells CutCommon how the site’s Magdalene Laundries and Industrial School set a different scene for his dark and ancient Labyrinth.
Evan, tell us about your immersive dance-opera. Specifically, dance-opera isn’t a medium we hear about too often, so I’d love to know why it spoke to you from a storytelling perspective.
Great question. Dance-opera is a bit of an odd one. Historically, sung theatre (opera) and dance were often paired together, with famous operas that included ballet being written especially for the French kings in the 17th Century. Many of us know stories about composers like Verdi and Wagner having to change and rewrite operas for French performances to include ballet.
But the definition of ‘dance-opera’ I use is one that tries to bring dance directly into the storytelling, rather than there being a section of the work that is danced.
I first explored this in my 2019 work Orpheus, which was written and staged more like an oratorio, with singers embedded into the orchestra and the dancers acting out the physical storytelling. I worked with choreographer and dancer Ashley Dougan on that work, and I am collaborating with him again on Labyrinth.
Ash comes from the contemporary dance world — a world I love. I love the abstract physical gestures of this world — sometimes the action is directed toward the storytelling, and sometimes it’s less literal. It’s something I try to aspire to in my musical storytelling as well.
So how would you describe the story of your new dance-opera Labyrinth?
In our version of this Greek myth, we begin with the hero, Theseus, as he arrives on the island of Crete with the Athenians who are being offered as sacrifices to the Minotaur. We then physically enter the labyrinth.
In our version, the audience moves through various spaces at the Abbotsford Convent, playing the role of the Athenians.
On our journey through the labyrinth, we meet Princess Ariadne — the sister of the Minotaur named Asterion (‘star’) at birth — who is herself trapped on the island. Throughout our version, she grapples with the prospect of helping Theseus kill her half-brother.
We also encounter dancers and musicians along the way, who perform chamber music and interact with the famous red thread that weaves through the labyrinth. Another key figure we meet is Daedalus, the architect of the labyrinth and father of Icarus, who, in our version, is a kind of mad professor trapped in their own creation.
The penultimate scene brings us face to face with the Minotaur, portrayed in this version by our piano soloist Danaë Killian. Throughout our journey, we’ve heard both the bellows and the light graceful music of the Minotaur-Asterion, but in the final scene, we are confronted with the beast itself.
The work premiered in 2024 — a sold-out debut — but now it’s been reimagined for a new space. What can audiences expect, particularly when words like ‘immersive’ and ‘witnessing first-hand the ordeal’ have been used to describe the experience?
Yes, the work was first presented last year in a sold-out season, also at the Abbotsford Convent for the Midsumma Festival, but in a small gallery space with a limited audience. This was a very intimate experience, for only 50 audience members at a time.
In this version, we move into the two largest spaces at the Convent — the Magdalene Laundries and the Industrial School. We’ve essentially quadrupled the performance area and are working with a completely different acoustic. We’ve also brought on the incredible Cathy Hunt, a brilliant director, to help shape the storytelling and audience experience.
As you journey through small twisting corridors and into four different rooms, you’ll encounter musicians and dancers along the way as well as a fully immersive electronic sound design. I hope this sonic world is unexpected and transformative, and envelops you in the labyrinth.
Your practice generally revolves around collaboration, but this time you’ve worked with several artists who have contributed libretto, performance, choreography, and direction. What do you most enjoy about creating a work in which your music will really come to life in a literal sense — through the body, through sound, through story?
Oh, I love this question. As a composer, you are often isolated in your work. You write a piece, then work with a musician or a group of musicians, and that’s usually where the process ends. Of course, you might workshop and revise things, but in most cases — whether it’s chamber music, solo music, or orchestral works — you’re ultimately creating a score that is static.
Music theatre works — ballet, dance, opera, musicals, etc. — are very different because the music needs to be moulded to the production, the situation, and the performers. Over my 15 years of writing music, I’ve learnt that this is where my skills shine best.
For this show, I knew I wanted to write an opera and embed a piano concerto within it for our incredible soloist Danaë Killian. Since Forest Collective brought Ashley on as an Associate Artist in 2019 for Orpheus, I’m always looking for ways to incorporate dance into our projects. Then, Daniel Szesiong Todd and I began researching the libretto.
Daniel is an incredible tenor and poet. He had never written a libretto before. But I knew that, with both those talents, he’d create something special — and my goodness, did he! His libretto is stunning and was an absolute dream to set to music. I think I only changed maybe four words or structures of sentences while I was composing the piece.
This process is what I love about creating art — I get to explore different musical styles, work directly with artists, take on their feedback, write music that is for a narrative rather than my own interest, and experience the thrill of changing and rewriting music on the fly. I even wrote a new ending for our last dress rehearsal the day before the performance. It was cool to feel like Mozart, frantically scribbling notes for the Don Giovanni overture the night before the show, as the story goes.
You’re also hosting a tactile tour as part of the event — tell us a bit about this tour.
Accessibility in all its forms is integral to Forest Collective. For last year’s season, Midsumma Festival connected us with Vitae Veritas, a company specialising in audio description and tactile tours. Nilgün Güven, who directs the company, is also a theatre maker herself, so she understands the entire creative process and vision.
For this show, our matinee performance begins with a tactile tour, where blind and low-vision audience members are guided through the space. They can hold props, feel the fabrics of costumes, and even touch and interact with dancers as they explain and demonstrate their movements. When we introduced this in our last season, it was easily a highlight of the run — bringing this level of detail to someone and deepening their experience of the show was truly fantastic.
For the audio description, patrons typically wear headsets and listen to a live narration of the show. However, for this production, we’re fortunate that Nilgün and her team will personally guide audience members through the space, whispering in real time descriptions of what is happening. This adds such a rich and immersive layer to the experience.
Opera is so often an inaccessible art form, but we’re incredibly proud to offer the blind and low-vision community the opportunity to experience this work in such a meaningful way thanks to the brilliance and depth that Vitae Veritas brings.
Why are you so often drawn back to Greek mythology in your works? I’m thinking of the precedents — your Orpheus ballet-opera, and your opera about Calypso and Odysseus, for instance.
You are correct — so many of my works revolve around myths!
It’s funny, probably 80 per cent of my output is based on Greek mythology while the rest explores the most contemporary theme of all: how we live and love through the internet.
What keeps drawing me back? Myths are timeless. They are archetypal. Many of us know — or think we know — their stories. In Orpheus, for instance, I highlighted his relationship with a young boy, a detail often sanitised from modern retellings. In Labyrinth, we delve into the notions of shame and guilt surrounding the Minotaur’s conception. These myths speak to our most primal selves. As writer Joseph Campbell said, myths matter because they provide a framework for understanding life’s major transitions.
And, of course, it helps that they’re out of copyright!
This story is not a bright one. I’d love to know what feeling you’re hoping to leave with your audiences — that is, why this production, and why now.
Very true, the work is dark. But it is also, I hope, very beautiful, hopeful, and moving.
I like the idea that one day, an opera company will stage my Labyrinth, and when we leave the labyrinth at the end, a performance of the second act of Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos will commence. A full 360 experience of this myth through music.
I don’t write in a vacuum. I’m always aware of the legacy of opera and art music, and I’m also deeply motivated by the audience’s experience. It’s a cliché, but I want the experience to be cool. I want people to have gone on this physical and musical journey and come to the end, maybe thinking, ‘What the f— was that?’ or, ‘I’ve never experienced opera like that’ or, ‘I wasn’t sure if I liked opera, but now I can see it in a new light’. I don’t think what I do is revolutionary, but I can say that not many people are doing it.
I love the idea that my music, and the whole work, is hypnotic, enticing, spooky, and beautiful. You journey through the depths of the earth, you are confronted by the beast, and at the end, we ascend into the light.
Parting words before descending into Labyrinth?
Come with an open mind.
If you love opera, you’ll get to hear some amazing singing from soprano Teresa Ingrilli, tenor Daniel Szesiong Todd, and our resident belter Girl Whatever.
I love pairing opera singers with different styles of singing, with Girl Whatever being more of a pop-musical theatre vocal chanteuse.
If you love chamber music, you’ll hear incredible performances by Kim Tan on flutes, Alex Macdonald on viola, and Danaë Killian absolutely shredding her piano cadenzas.
Ashley Dougan and Charlie MacArthur’s dance is so beautiful, our lighting by Gabe Bethune transforms the rooms into a twisted labyrinth, Cathy’s staging is sophisticated and subtle, and our costumes by Jane Noonan are gorgeous.
And to cap it off, the show is only 60 minutes long, and we have yummy wines from Noisy Ritual!
Labyrinth is now showing and runs until 8 February. A tactile tour takes place at 3pm that day. For more information and bookings, visit the Forest Collective website.
Images supplied. Credit Suzanne Phoenix. Evan captured by Simone Ruggiore.
