Melia Watras

SEAN HARVEY: BROKEN BELL
a concert play (2024)

World Premiere: Coming soon

Program Notes: 
Homo erectus is an early species of human that died out just over 100,000 years ago after living and thriving as an apex predator throughout southern and eastern Africa, Europe, Asia and Indonesia for approximately two million years. They are believed to have invented the use of fire. There are relatively few remains of homo erectus extant and what we know of them is mostly conjecture.

Broken Bell posits a world tens of thousands of years in the future when the last of the dinosaurs — the  birds — have finally died out and there are few remains of our species left. A successor hominid species combs what meager ruins they can find for hints of what our lives were like. In the process they come across sheet music from tonight’s performance, but can’t make heads or tails of it.

—Sean Harvey