Sustain a cry and witness it infiltrating. Hold it long enough until it fractures and shoots into space. Sustain a cry until you are not in one piece anymore, until your unknowingness lays bare. Sustain a cry and endure its unbearability. You are vulnerable and therefore wounded. Your fate is not originally or finally separable from mine.*

large space in the back of the mouth shares a dissection of vocalized crying as a sonic phenomenon. Crying, as a symptom of grief, pushes the bodily state of the crier to operate beyond control. In this sense, crying is ungraspable and exposes the crier to a state foreign to themselves. This state of unknowingness, as called by Judith Butler, reveals how humans are tied to each other. The sonic composition of cries is carried by, but detached from the individual performers in order to give space for the audience to engage with this state of unknowingness. Staying with grief allows a return to a sense of human vulnerability, to the collective responsibility for the physical lives of one another.

The first part of the research of large space in the back of the mouth was on stage during O. 2024 as a graduation work, as part of Re:master Opera.

About O. Lab
During O. Lab, you get a sneak peek into the rehearsal room of theatre makers, something that is normally reserved for a select company… Artists share their research questions and you as a visitor can give your valuable opinion on the prototypes and works-in-progress you see. O. Lab at WORM is one big creative space and you have a front row seat to the creative process!

*This text contains quotes and paraphrasing from Judith Butler’s Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence