Cutting edge stagecraft meets operatic virtuosity as monumental California mural art is magically brought to life in a world premier music-theater spectacle with a breathtaking original score by composer Forrest Fang, directed by the internationally noted California performance artist, George Coates.

In Blind Messengers music, multimedia and California mural art conspire and merge to create a chorus of contending voices echoing off the painted walls of sacred caves and massive public mural art as fires, floods, earthquakes, and drought threaten to erase a creative message of survival. The production is designed as a music-theater celebration of the diverse and sometimes mysterious ways that innovative Californians have produced public art as a creative message to succeeding generations.


 


 

A live, mixed-voice chorus of singers and soloists under the musical direction of Sue Bohlin of the Piedmont Choirs, share the stage with actors performing on "virtual stage sets" created from digital animations of spectacular California mural art. The production has its world premier in the open air courtyard theater of the new Golden State Museum in Sacramento, California using the massive ConstitutionWall sculpture on display there as an animated multimedia stage set.

The touring version of Blind Messengers places the cast of live performers in a "virtual recreation" of The Constitution Wall for audiences statewide to experience how California aboriginal cave paintings have transformed over time into the wildly diverse public murals found throughout California cities and towns today.

Blind Messengers is a multimedia music-theater homage to the artistry of early Californians and a harbinger of creativity to come. The production features innovative stagecraft technologies developed by George Coates Performance Work in association with leading California high-technology companies. The innovative artists and stagecraft professionals of George Coates Performance Works have produced multimedia music-theater events worldwide for more than twenty years at major international performing arts festivals and in the United States at the Kennedy Center Opera House and at BAM's Next Wave Festival, New York.