Running man

The development and creation of Running Man is generously supported by Creative Australia, Create NSW and Inner West Council.

The material in this piece is a development of some of my ideas for a larger work titled 'Running Man' which explores intergenerational trauma and facets of serious mental illness. The text for these art songs are excerpts taken from the libretto for 'Running Man' written by Pierce Wilcox.

There are three characters in the larger work: The Witness, The Clinician and The Visionary.

The Visionary is the character that suffers from serious mental illness (bipolar/ schizophrenia/psychosis). In the larger work, The Visionary's sound world will be heavily electronic, digitally affected and manipulated. We don't hear directly from The Visionary in this set of songs, however The Visionary's sounds are heard intruding in various sections of these studies, particularly in the 7/ 8 sections of movements 1 and 3. The dampened D1 in the piano belongs to The Visionary.

The Witness is the child who sees and encounters The Visionary's suffering. We see her trying to process what she has witnessed, trying to heal and navigate her own mental health challenges in the form of trauma. Her sound world is sparse, open and vulnerable and she is the purest and most authentic sounding of all three characters. The e-bow belongs to The Witness and represents her sense of self or of inner calm which at times evades her or does not sit in alignment with her narrative.

The Clinician is the character that is analysing the complex lived experiences of The Visionary and The Witness. The Clinician is highly stylised and is stuck in a rigid, conservative and cliché sound world. In the larger work, The Clinician should sound grossly out of place amongst the other characters. Unlike The Visionary and The Witness who are closely intertwined and who influence each other greatly, The Clinician is jarring, un-moved and disconnected from the vivid emotions of the other characters.