Meet Vox Project Director Julia Benzinger

Q: The Vox Project reimagines La voix humaine across multiple interpretations, artists, and spaces. What first inspired you to take this singular story and refract it through so many different voices?

A: In the summer of 2020 I was finishing my masters degree in Barcelona, Spain and living in the heart of the medieval neighborhood, El born. The country was coming out of a hard lockdown and everyone, including myself, took as many opportunities as possible to be outside. One afternoon I was meandering the winding streets of the old city and came across a mural sponsored by the city. At first glimpse it was interesting only in its plainess- numerous sheets of plain white paper placed against the ancient wall. On each piece of paper was a printed first name, an age, and the name of a town or city in Catalunya (Later women from throughout Spain were included on the updated iterations of the mural). Below that was a date of death and then, most harrowing, how that woman was murdered by her intimate partner during lockdown.

I passed by that mural almost everyday and always took a moment to read the names aloud and think about those women.

On one of my stops, I took more time to think about them and their lives. Who were they? What did they enjoy doing? Did they have children? A pet? A favorite tv show or recording artist? What happened during their day to day existence of living with someone capable of murder?

My mind then went to how could one theatrically bring their voices to light? To express these many different people now brought together through the act of intimate partner violence and femicide and whose names will be memorialized as a warning and reflection on socially constructed and often culturally perpetuated masculine violence.

La voix humaine was the first work that came to mind - a work that has so often been framed as a 'hysterical' and 'unhinged' woman who is unable to rationally deal with the ending of a relationship. Many times we have seen this opera directed by an older man staging the mental collapse of a young woman. I wanted to reexamine the work from multiple perspectives, like the wall of names, and explore how final phone conversations with loved ones can look, sound, and feel when voiced by many people from different backgrounds.

Q: Each version exists within its own world, from cafés and galleries to sacred and domestic spaces. How do you approach directing when place itself becomes a character?

A: Creating site-specific work where the space itself is as important a character as the people performing is one of my favorite things to explore. Every edifice and room transmits its own story and history, making it difficult to ignore the impact of space on the person who is exisitng within the walls.

Usually I begin by looking at the space- its openess, its shadows. The furniture or lack thereof. Does it feel cavernous or confined? Is it busy with other people or completely empty? What emotions does the place evoke? Then I try to learn about the building's history and how it is currently used. Finally, for this project, I thought about how a person would naturally be within each space and how they would experience Cocteau's brilliant text.

Q: Cocteau’s original text is famously intimate and ambiguous. What discoveries have you made about its emotional or psychological landscape through working with so many performers and settings?

A: I must admit that my previous interractions with La voix humaine often left me feeling detached or disinterested in the protagonist and her story. This is partly a failing on my part to really dig into the material before seeing it but also, I think, a trend of directors to glorify and gratuitously delight in the pain of a person in crisis. So often the character seemed two-dimensional. She begins in a heightened state of anxiety and it just escalates from there. I find that kind of display of deep trauma and its impacts unrealistic and uninteresting at best, dismissive and dangerous at worst.

Thankfully, we also have Isaiah Bell's brilliant English adaptation to work with. His interpretation of the original work is breathtaking in its scope and pacing and I cannot wait for more people to experience it. Every choice feels true to our times and the technological and cultural challenges we face.

Dramatically, each artist has stopped at the line, "Tomorrow? I didn't think it would happen so soon," and prompted a conversation. What is tomorrow? Why is it so soon? We get to decide what's happening tomorrow. Is the former lover filing for divorce, eloping with their mistress, moving across the country, demanding their apartment keys back? The audience is never privy to what is happening "tomorrow" but it is important that the actor, pianist, and I have a clear understanding of what the protagonist is responding to as it colors the emotional arc of the rest of the opera.

Q: The project features a remarkable diversity of voices, languages, and identities. How do you ensure that each artist’s personal truth shapes, rather than conforms to, the story?

A: Personal truths in the context of this work can be tricky and several conversations between the artists and myself are needed to get to a place of trust. If an artist wants to explore their own experiences with the themes we're highlighting, then I want them to feel comfortable and safe to do so. If it feels better to find external sources of inspiration, then we go down that route. Each actor has their own way of working through texts and bringing them to life, it is my job to find the best ways to blend my concept of the work with their desire to inhabit the world of the character.

Q: The Vox Project brings opera into living rooms, cafés, and community spaces - far from traditional stages. What does it mean to you to decentralize opera in this way?

A: I'm a big fan of decentralizing art. Don't get me wrong, I love a big ass Ring Cycle at Seattle Opera as much as the next person, but there's something very raw and impactful about producing theater, and specifically chamber opera, outside the theater walls. Artists and audiences seem to respond more immediately and viscerally to that. There's not much room to hide or shrink into the crowd. We're forced to confront subjects and themes that we may not engage with in our daily lives. But as it's a performance, it is a safe place to let your mind open and allow yourself to become curious about what the characters are experiencing. This can then lead to self reflection and dialogue within partnerships, families, and communities.

Q: Directing multiple versions of the same opera requires both structure and surrender. How do you balance consistency of vision with space for each team’s artistic autonomy?

A: Balancing consistency of vision with space for each team's artistic autonomy is a beautiful opportunity for me to remain alert and open in my conversations with the artists. For example, I have worked to find common threads of key moments that weave between the various iterations of this project and it is up to me to explain these choices and why it will hopefully create a consistent and intriguing through-line on Cocteau's work.

Q: As someone deeply interested in dramaturgy, how do you translate themes like love, loss, technology, and silence into movement, stillness, and visual language?

A: In this project I have found that marinating in stillness and silence is key to translating Cocteau's themes of loss, love, technology, and heartbreak. He was a master of exploring time and space - the floating between the liminal and the fixed. Working through the score, it has been a joy to take advantage of the many long pauses Poulenc has written in. It allows the work to become much more like a work of straight theater and the actor can bathe in the meaning of those silences. There is no call to rush through changes in thought or responses to what the person on the other line has said.

Q: Collaboration lies at the heart of The Vox Project. What moments - musical, emotional, or interpersonal - have surprised or transformed you most during this process?

A: Oh. Working with Lucy Weber on the filmed version was one of the most powerful and rewarding experiences of my artistic life. Her willingness to bare her soul and explore a characterization that she wasn't intially expecting was humbling. Each of the artists on this project has put so much of themselves into this. Working with a contemporary English adaptation and removing the safety of the stage and 4th wall require an actor to be vulnerable in an entirely different way than they are called to do in a traditional production.

Musically, each pianist has brought their own strong opinions to the harmonic world-building that Poulenc creates. It has been such an honor watching Mark and Jay also bring different musical voices to the different versions they are playing.

I've fallen in love with so many moments of this piece and that, too, is informed by how each artist inhabits those moments and what they choose to emphasize.

Q: This work began as an exploration of a single voice in conversation. After shepherding so many interpretations, what do you now understand differently about the human voice, and the act of being heard?

A: Everyone wants to be understood, seen, and loved. How we express those desires is what differs from person to person. Some people are more passive, asking for permission to be heard. Others have been oppressed and silenced for so long that the act of speaking up with their own thoughts and wishes is completely foreign to them. Others have zero problems saying what is on their mind, consequences be damned. And others still use their voice to actively silence anyone they perceive as a threat to their point of view or comfort. Then there are those who navigate speaking up and cycling back to silencing themselves. One of the joys and challenges of this project has been to examine who it is I'm dealing with and how that character operates within the context of this conversation and unhealthy relationship.