LEO DOULTON

I am currently researching different types of through-sung drama from around the world - that is to say ‘things that happen on a stage where people sing all the time’.

I’m doing this because I want to understand how many choices we have when making work. Someone working in opera might say you need to ‘show, don’t tell’ - but a Noh performer might disagree. Even within opera, a Romantic composer would disagree with a Brechtian composer about why people were singing.

Right now I’ve studied opera, musical theatre, Noh, wayang kulit, and Brecht (In fact, it's a picture of me to the left). There are about thirty different forms on my list that I want to study and compare.

The orthodoxies I was trained in are not universal, and by looking at other ways of making through-sung drama I believe I’ll be able to make better, freer choices.

Hopefully, they’ll include imagining a new, international form that I don’t yet have a word for.