Where will you be when the world ends? Will you even know that it’s ending? Sun & Sea, a durational “opera-performance” In English by Lithuanian artists Lina Lapelytė, Vaiva Grainytė and Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, imagines the world ending with a “long, lazy afternoon whiled away at the beach”.
After winning the Golden Lion at the 2019 Venice Biennale, and appearing at festivals across Europe, the Sydney Festival performance takes place in a Sydney Town Hall filled with 26 tonnes of sand. Sung in a continuous loop, one cycle takes 60 minutes and tickets are purchased for specific time slots. From the balconies above, we look down on a group of holiday goers sunning themselves, reading books, looking at their phones, finishing crosswords, throwing footballs to each other, and returning with dripping hair from a “swim”. The cast is made up of opera singers, but also actors, toddling tots, and a little brown dog playing with a bone-coloured chew toy.
Lapelytė’s score is deceptively simple, made up of electronic sounds, reverb-heavy keyboards and varying textures of singing above them. The understated, thinner texture of the music that seems to come from everywhere and nowhere means that noises like a racquet hitting a ball and the coo, cry and giggle of babies become part of the soundscape. Grainytė’s libretto is similarly understated, with very funny moments and desperately sad ones too. In the ‘3D Sisters’ Song’ two young twins sing “I cried so much when I learned that corals will be gone… I cried so much when I understood that I am mortal”. In ‘Chanson of Admiration (1 through 3)’, a lone soprano praises the sky, the sea, the colours, the plastic in it. A deeper tenor sings the ‘Song of Exhaustion/Workaholic’s Song’ from his beach lounge chair, and the rest of the chorus joins in; “exhaustion, exhaustion, it’s like a mammoth…”
Barzdžiukaitė’s direction and set design is also a marvel. Every cast member is constantly in motion, in a way that never feels overly choreographed, and the tiniest details leave so much to discover as you listen to people complain about rubbish, about not taking enough holidays, about losing the Great Barrier Reef. Swimsuits, towels, and beach paraphernalia are pleasingly colour-coordinated, books and newspapers have climate change relevant headlines, and never-ending chatter continues underneath the music.
Not strictly an opera, and not strictly a performance, Sun & Sea is a dreamy recreation of the end of the world. What are we without our little worries about the holidays and coming back to work? What happens if we choose not to care? Will there still be people complaining about sunscreen and dog shit on the beach when the world is on fire? Spend an hour (or two) digging through the sand of this beautiful, intricate performance and find out.
Sun & Sea is performing at Sydney Town Hall from January 6-8, 2023, as part of Sydney Festival. You can book an hour-long session from every half-hour between 4pm-7.30pm on Saturday, and from 3.30pm-6pm on Sunday. Tickets are $39+bf and you can get yours here.
