The Strange-TUNDRA Opera

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Following an extraterrestrial girl Scaarleas, Rovcses tells her story. 

She is born with ice white hair and milk pink eyes into a dark green haired people known as the Onés. Brought as a newborn baby to a distant, abandoned temple in the deep tundra, she is left there to be raised.

Within the temple live light entities known as TheyWomen. She is raised by them far away from the outside world. She reaches her near fully grown years and having never been outside before. She had spent her years speaking to the light entities, dwelling in a distant temple nestled in the far reaches of the flat tundra, learning their language, and copying down all that they said-- inking their words into books and carving them into the floors and walls. 

The light entities speak in poetry and abstract words. They sometimes make clear sense but most often they do not. Scaarleas learns to understand vaguely what they say and writes down what they say simply because she can. 

She is what is called an "Ashen", a unique creature born with ice white hair whose ears can hear the voices of the light entities without certain pain. Others suffer excruciatingly at the high pitched sound of their speech, and many die just listening.

Ashens, which is what Scaarleas is, are feared to the same degree the light entities are. Scaarleas was born in a small village scape far off away from the temple in which she grew up. In her born village, light entities exist only in nightmarish stories as cruel and vicious creatures. Children grow up hearing their names and whimpering to sheds immediately, bracing themselves when walking around tree stells in open forests fearing they may run into a light entity.

Ashens, like Scaarleas, are very rarely born but when they are, the fear runs so deep in the people that all such white haired children are killed at birth. It is believed they are too much alike to light entities, speaking their language, sounding like them and even communicating with them. 

Scaarleas, born in the village but brought to the wilderness as a child by her mother who's only wish was to protect her, knows none of this. She is an Ashen yet she does not understand what this means. She speaks only the language of the light entities and sees them as if her mothers and nothing else. She ages in her far place, grows taller and older surrounded by the thick marble walls, protected from the outside world, until one night when the light entities open the doors and invite her to go outside.

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complete photo albums for the strange-tundra opera:

CTCMBS III

CTCMBS IV

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The incipit and initiating art piece of strange-tundra was an orchestral ice opera called Anethemas or Roveses. Xxhe composed it independently at the age of seventeen using GarageBand. The music follows the events of their novel of the same name. The opera's score is unique because down to every distinct sound, there is an action being played out according directly to the novel. It is so precise that timestamps appear in the book.

When completed, the opera held an outstanding length of 7 hours. Xxhe revisited it after three years, selected many key climatic pieces and stylized them into the first half of a live show. It was called the Strange-Tundra Opera.

Set on a plausibly-theoretical alien world, the strange-tundra opera follows a young extraterrestrial girl through bioluminescent forests and jarring dreamscapes as she dances and tunnels with creatures made entirely of light whose language can only be sung and is unpronounceable spoken . The music, all composed in strange-tundra, was interpreted using modern dance, spoken word, high contrast lighting and light reflective costumeage.

Maxine Flasher-Düzgüneş played the role of Scaarleas in this live theater poetta-bizarre interpretation of Roveses rei.

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shot at Monument SF, Jan 2024 by FilmLifeFilms