Pierrot Lunaire
Synopsis
Invited by the conductor Premil Petrovic to stage Arnold Schoenbergâs Pierrot Lunaire, a musical theater work from 1912 based on the poems of Albert Giraud, LaBruce transposed a strange and tragic episode of true crime onto the composition. Complementing the original atonal score is a narrative about a trans man who is outed by his girlfriendâs father and forbidden from seeing the young woman again. Crestfallen, the protagonist decides to prove the fact of his manhood by castrating a taxi driver and then revealing his newly transplanted member to the two of them. This story, which for LaBruce âserves as a kind of allegory for all gender radicals and outcasts driven to extremes by the disapproval and hostility of the dominant order,â is rendered in a visual style that nods to the era of Schoenbergâs melodrama. LaBruce cheekily appropriates the formal vocabulary of silent cinema with black-and-white photography, irises, and intertitles like âA cock, a cock, my kingdom for a cock!â
Where to watch
Not currently available to stream in United States.
