Sarah Drury

Interactive Performance

Vocalalia: Under My Skin, 2002, Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

A performance based on the Voicebox Installation, Vocalalia explores interactive performance relationships by including a second singer, contained within a second voicebox. The once-popular Cole Porter song "I've Got You Under My Skin" structures the piece, its romantic yet cryptic language exploring boundaries of separation and merging in a relationship. In addition to the theme of physical isolation and displaced mediated presence, this piece raises other issues of voice interaction, exploring special voice events that occur in duet. Vocalalia plays on the idea of "singing together", and the possibility that this relationship will evoke not a multiplicity of voices, but perhaps a third vocal persona.