Photo by Slavisa Drobnjaković
AFTER THAT IT HAPPENED
By Nancy Black and Constantine Koukias
“The world appears as a complicated tissue of events, in which connections of different kinds alternate or overlap or combine and thereby determine the texture of the whole”.
– Werner Heisenberg
AFTER THAT IT HAPPENED follows four people who live in disparate parts of the globe in different eras, and never meet. Their choices and actions, however, are profoundly inter-connected, however, as each grapples with a life-changing decision. We propose a universe where past, present and future occupy the same moment, and individual actions resonate across space.
Creative Team
Direction & Libretto – Nancy Black
Music – Constantine Koukias
Scenography – Slavisa Drobnjaković & Constantine Koukias
Projection & Sound Design – Mik Lavage
Animated Object Design – Hamish Fletcher
Netherlands & US Cast
Inez Timmer – Voice (role of Michelle)
Judith Weusten – Soprano (role of Robyn)
Ben Le Clair – Bass (role of Theodore)
Ilija Surla – Actor (role of Sergei)
The personal dilemmas affecting the characters touch on major contemporary concerns from politics to mental illness to the search for vaccines. The action, llibretto, music and scenography weave a three-dimensional circular tapestry of connections between the characters Each is torn by conflicting emotions, capable of both good and evil. Time is warped – their trajectories last from a few hours to five years. Each of their stories finishes a few days before Christmas.
Using a fully orchestrated, pre-recorded music score (no live instruments), with 3 voices sung and 1 spoken, we will counterpoint musical genres and styles, creating dynamic threads through the work.
Characters
Sergei (spoken, not sung), a Serbian writer in 1981, has gone into hiding in Frankfurt because his exposé about Slobodan Milosevic’s rise to power has created a furore, and his life is threatened. His publisher wants him in NY. The book is sensational. Nevertheless. he is plagued by fear, self-doubt, and guilt for what he has done to his family. He thinks he’ll be killed if he goes outside. The opera follows him from June until December when he makes up his mind.
In 1939, just before the outbreak of WWII, Robyn (soprano) lands a job in a Melbourne textile store. She’s thrilled because she had not been able to find a job during the Depression. Naïve at first, she quickly learns to charm, bribe and fool almost anyone as the war progresses, but finds herself flummoxed by her sister who is mentally ill and needs her. Does she stop working and look after her? We follow her from 1939 to the end of the war in 1945.
Theodore (bass baritone), a primary school teacher in rural Pennsylvania in late December 1880, apparently loves both the world of the intellect and his students – but gradually we learn he’s just been fired. His world and self-definition have fallen apart. He struggles to find new meaning and a place in the world. We follow him for a week.
Michelle (mezzo) heads a team of scientists working for a pharmaceutical company in France in 2019. They have discovered a way to prevent malaria, and the company wants to announce their findings that night. Her trajectory covers only a few hours.
Resolution
Sergei gradually emerges from his fear and self-doubt, boards Pan Am flight 103 from Frankfurt to Detroit, which explodes over Lockerbie on December 21, 1981.
Robyn morphs from a happy innocent into a charming, manipulative, successful and self-obsessed woman. She delights in manipulating her customers, develops methods for shutting the war out, and tries similar ways to block her sister. They don’t work. The sister kills herself a few days before Christmas. Robyn has to change.
Theodore, seemingly gracious, intellectual, and generous, decides he wants to give his school a Christmas gift – something by which he’ll always be remembered. We discover he has been fired because, he thinks, the school’s headmistress decided to replace him with a woman. In fact, although women were moving into the education system at the time, he reveals dark and volatile aspects of himself that suggest why the headmistress took action. He decides to build for them a model of the schoolhouse – and give it to them at the Christmas concert. When they lift the roof off to peer inside, it will explode and kill them all.
Michelle will end the opera. Throughout she wants to avoid her problem, diverts herself through other things, deflects the CEO of the company, and wrestles with her angst. We learn that she has just had confirmation that their “product, their wonderful discovery, will obliterate the insect population of the world, and eventually wipe out mankind. Does she admit that, stop the operation, or allow it to progress, and find a solution before doomsday? She has to choose.
The opera is dark, but the libretto is laced with humour and tenderness as well. Each character will have his/her own space in the set, but there are also times when they cross through one another’s spaces, transforming the space into a street, a corridor, another room. They sense but don’t see the characters around them.
Duration: approximately 1 hr 15.
Nancy Black
Direction & Libretto
Black Hole Theatre’s Artistic Director Nancy Black has created and directed award winning shows, produced festivals, outdoor performances, operas, and ten Puppet Slams. A passionate advocate for Australian puppetry, she has worked tirelessly to develop local, national and international opportunities for Black Hole Theatre, emerging and experienced artists, and independent companies. Since 2004 work includes: Caravan (Green Room Award, internat’l tour), Coop(Green Room awards), Hutch, Into the Black Hole, 10 puppet slams around Victoria and NSW, Les Méduses (int’l tour), Blind with the Duda Paiva Co (NL) – Green Room nomination, international tour, workshops and developments. 2017 The Book of Revelations. 2018 development of The Line, tour of Blind to USA. 2019 Development of Vault, Listen Up! with the Natimuk community, presentation of Last Lighthouse Keeper, early work on After That It Happened with Foundation IHOS Amsterdam. 2020: online workshops 5 6 7 Create!, short film rEvolvn with 12 artists.
In 2014 she instigated and co-ordinated the professional skills program Fermenting Change. For the Victorian Opera: 2012 What Next?, Master Peter’s Puppet Show, 2016 Four Saints in Three Acts, 2017 Sleeping Beauty. For BIFEM 2016: ###Nude Girls Live!!! 2017 The Gate to Pardise – for the Chinese company One Tree. 2007 She co-produced the Festival of Australian Theatre in China taking 5 theatre companies to Beijing and Shanghai.
Slavisa Drobnjaković
Scenography
Slavisa Drobnjaković began his artistic journey studying classical theatre at the age of fourteen in Yugoslavia, later expanding his education to include Cultural Anthropology and Art Academy in
Belgrade. After moving to Amsterdam in 2001, he immersed himself in various artistic collaborations,
including performance art at Das Arts Amsterdam and Amsterdam Cyber Theatre.
Drobnjaković has written several commercial scripts for ComradFilm
in Slovenia and worked as a creative consultant on the film “Gardens of Fez” by Heidi Vogels.
In recent years, he has dedicated himself to screenwriting and film directing. He has been engaged as a writer/ director for Sluizer Film Productions for two long features:
“The Tragic Death of Branka Djukic” and “The Wasteland”.
For Foundation IHOS Amsterdam, Drobnjaković wrote and directed the film sequences for the film noir opera “A Deep Black Sleep.” He has also written the libretto for the opera “Capricorn” and adapted Haydn’s oratorio “The Creation” for the stage.
In his works for both screen and stage, he has designed costume and production design. His short film “The Pain of Others” is planned for release in 2025. Drobnjaković’s work often explores complex themes such as human suffering, cultural identity, and the interplay between past and present. “Eros and Thanatos,” his next short film, is in development.
Constantine Koukias
Scenography
Constantine Koukias is an internationally acclaimed composer, opera director, and producer based in Amsterdam since 2013. Originally from Tasmania, where he co-founded with Werner Ihlenfeld IHOS Music Theatre and Opera, he has built a distinguished career spanning over three decades, with projects presented across Europe, Australia, North America, and Asia.
Koukias’s work is distinguished by its innovative fusion of large-scale music theatre, opera, film, and installation art, often exploring themes of migration, identity, and human rights. His productions are recognized for their striking spatial and temporal designs and their integration of diverse musical traditions, including Byzantine, Latin, and Eastern influences.
Major international commissions include ICON for the 20th anniversary of the Sydney Opera House and The Barbarians, inspired by Constantine Cavafy, which was commissioned by the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA). Koukias’s avant-garde approach to opera has resulted in groundbreaking productions such as Days and Nights with Christ, To Traverse Water, MIKROVION, The Divine Kiss, Tesla – Lightning in His Hand, and Prayer Bells, which premiered in Chicago. Other notable works include Kimisis – Falling Asleep, which has toured the Netherlands and Australia, and Before The Flame Goes Out, performed at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and other major European museums.
Recent projects include the film noir opera Deep Black Sleep for MONA FOMA, the film opera Shaped by Trees (in collaboration with Biasino William Pezzimenti), and the international documentary-performance series PRIMORDIAL, exploring Ediacara fossil sites worldwide.
Koukias has received numerous prestigious awards, including the International Valentino Bucchi Vocal Prize in Rome for Incantation II for soprano and digital delay, the Sir Winston Churchill Fellowship for his contributions to music and opera, and The American Prize for his direction of Backward from Winter. He also won ABC Radio’s Gallipoli Centenary Composer Competition with Three Episodes from the Diary of Signaller Peter Ellis. His opera The Barbarians was nominated for a Helpmann Award for Best New Opera. His work has also been recognized in the field of design with the Interior Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) and the Australian Interior Design Awards for the production of The Barbarians.
Beyond his artistic achievements, Koukias is recognized as a passionate collaborator and advocate for social justice initiatives.
Mik Lavage
Projection & Sound Design
Mik Lavage is an Australian sound and vision designer, composer, and musician. Working on stage and screen, Mik has been nominated for AFI awards (screen) and worked on shows nominated for the Helpmann Awards (stage).
Mik has collaborated with a broad range of artists and companies from the ancient Greek leanings of IHOS to the acrobatic worlds of The Tom Tom Crew, Company 2, and Strange Fruit, and has performed worldwide in Melbourne, Munich, Montreal, Detroit, Paris, and Taipei, among other locations. He currently tours globally with The Orkestra of the Underground, Company 2, IHOS, Hermitude, and Toni Childs working as a sound designer, a musical performer, and a designer of interactive visual elements.
Mik is also a graduate of AFTRS (Australian Film, Television & Radio School) in music composition for film, and has produced numerous albums as a solo artist as well as with Toni Childs. His music has been featured in many dance, theatre, and film productions that range from political documentary to feature film.
Hamish Fletcher
Animated Object Design
Hamish is a versatile designer, performer and theatre maker focussing mostly on visual theatre. He has a Masters in theatre (Puppetry) from Victorian College of the Arts(Australia) and has also trained under Philipe Genty, Mary Underwood, Duda Paiva, Laura Sheedy and Peter Wilson. Hamish has worked extensively in theatre, television and cross art forms. He has collaborated and worked on a range of productions for ABC television, Sticky Pictures, Super Studios and companies Windmill Theatre, Arena Theatre, Victorian Opera, Men of Steel, MIFF and Circus Oz as well as countless small and experimental projects.
He has toured work over 25 cities worldwide including to China, Japan, Malaysia, The UK, Ireland, USA, Singapore, Portugal and Canada. He has won Best Host at Kidscreen 2012 as Hoot The Owl for ABC and Festival Directors award as part of Men of Steel at Melbourne International Comedy Festival. He is currently developing an experimental theatre/IRL game called Money = Happiness along with some ground-breaking work with Jeff Achtem and Bunk Puppets.