FOUR PERFORMANCES ONLY!
Thursday, February 23, at 8pm
Friday, February 24 at 8pm
Saturday, February 25 at 8pm
Sunday, February 26 at 2pm
MORE INFO HERE
READ THE PRESS RELEASE for BABA: The Life and Death of Stana
Commissioned and performed by Kitka Women’s Vocal Ensemble, BABA: The Life and Death of Stana is a contemporary opera by internationally-acclaimed Slovenian director, composer, author, and conductor Karmina Šilec.
BABA is inspired by real and imagined stories of Balkan sworn virgins (women who live as men after taking vows of chastity and celibacy). The tradition of sworn virgins is rooted in a centuries-old social code of law present in remote rural regions of Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Serbia. Born as women, life circumstances—including the loss of male relatives in blood feuds or a desire to escape an oppressive arranged marriage—led these individuals to become men to gain the honors, rights, privileges, and freedoms of community patriarchs. The motives for this gender transformation were traditionally social responsibility and family honor, as opposed to sexual preference or feelings of being male by nature. BABA brings to light a disappearing practice of women sacrificing their sexuality and transforming themselves into men as a means of survival in an isolated, dangerous, impoverished, and intensely patriarchal and gender-binary part of the world.
An innovative, non-narrative take on Balkan epic story-singing traditions, BABA explores themes of gender, otherness, choice, virginity, sexual identity, and the complexities of interpreting these Balkan gender-transformation stories through a contemporary, liberal, Western lens.
CREATIVE TEAM
Author, composer, and director: Karmina Šilec
Performed by Kitka Ensemble: Kelly Atkins, Caitlin Tabancay Austin, Leslie Bonnett, Briget Boyle, Barbara Byers, Shira Cion, Erin Lashnits Herman, Juliana Graffagna, Shira Kammen, Janet Kutulas, Maclovia Quintana, Beth Wilmurt
Scenographer: Dorian Šilec Petek
Movement advisor: Sidra Bell
Assistant movement advisor: Sarah Lisette Chiesa
Projection design: Dorian Šilec Petek, Miha Likar
Lighting design & technical director: G. Chris Griffin
Costume design: Karmina Šilec & Vesna Novitović
Percussion coach: Rumen “Sali” Shopov
Stage Manager: Alex Seidel
The commissioning, creation, and presentation of BABA is supported, in part, by The Hewlett50 Arts Commissions, The National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA, Mills College Performing Arts, The Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and the Berkeley Repertory Theater’s Ground Floor Artist Residencies., and the City of Oakland Cultural Funding Program.