Sophia Brous: Mount Analogue – A Provisionally Utopian Live Performance Event
A transformative trip to a surreal mountainscape of the mind
Showings and tickets
Showings and tickets
Friday, 23/09
Saturday, 24/09
An immersive, kaleidoscopic landscape of sound, theatre, expanded cinema, music and interactive storytelling.
Sophia Brous: Mount Analogue – A Provisionally Utopian Live Performance Event(2022, WP)
This world premiere, commissioned by Ultima, brings together an international ensemble of distinguished artists under the direction of Australian genre-defying artist, musician and vocalist Sophia Brous.
Mount Analogue is adapted for the stage from the landmark novella Le Mont Analogue (1952) by French surrealist writer Réné Daumal (1908–44). Written in the last five years of the author’s life, the book has become a cult classic and was the inspiration for Alejandro Jodorowsky’s film The Holy Mountain (1973). The book describes a philosophical journey to a symbolic mountain. ‘The gateway to the invisible must be visible,’ wrote Daumal.
Brous’s radical ‘provisionally utopian live performance event’ examines the potential of transforming myth into reality, in an immersive performance workshop, theatrical reading, musical concert, and audio-visual installation. Begun in 2018, the performance is the next stage of a creative collaboration between Brous, US film maker Ben Russell and Academy Award-winning French sound designer and foley artist Nicolas Becker (Sound of Metal, Arrival, Gravity). The trio undertook a series of voyages across Europe from the Arctic Circle to the Aegean Peninsula to trace out a radiant path towards a mountain, culminating in a series of film and sound works. Mount Analogue is the latest stop on this adventurous journey.
Mount Analogue is set within an immersive landscape of 360 degree performance, sound foley, projection, custom-made instruments and large-scale scenography. It draws from the mountain songs, mystical objects and vivid imagery found in Daumal’s original book, in an experimental performance workshop of text, music and moving image, where exploration, exhaustion and ecstasy conspire with the audience’s imagination to realise a path towards a mythical mountain.
Mount Analogue er bestilt af Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival, og produsert av Ultima i samarbeid med Den Norske Opera & Ballett med støtte til bestillingsverk og produksjon fra Norsk Kulturråd, The Watermill Centre New York, Providenza Corsica, Australian Embassy in Copenhagen, Australia Council for the Arts, Institut français de Norvège.
Director, writer & performer
- Sophia Brous
Sound designer, performer
- Nicolas Becker
Film maker
- Ben Russell
Musician, kinetic sound sculpture, performer
- Tony Buck
Accordion, electronics, performer
- Camilla Barrett-Due
Actor, performer
- Corinne Jaber
- Ivan Cheng
Sound design, performer
- Guillaume Malaret
Sound design and workshop leader 'Electrical Mixerspace'
- Seb Bureau
Set design
- Simone Bartholin
Video Designer 'Always, and never the same'
- Dino Botti
Lighting design, production manager
- Tanja Ruhl
Associate director, dramaturg
- Aaron Orzech
Executive producer
- Francisca Aires
Stage Manager
- Gig Clarke
In collaboration with
- Den Norske Opera & Ballett
With support from
- Kulturrådet (The Grammar of Ornament)
- Institut français de Norvège
- Australian Council for the Arts
- The Watermill Centre New York
- Providenza Corsica
- Australian Embassy in Copenhagen
