Based on the Epitaph of Seikilos (at the time the oldest written music known), and recorded with New York based avant-garde vocalist Fay Victor, the world of Plato's text was completely fabricated from this given kernel.

Piece: The Republic
Author: Plato, adapted by Noah Meese
Production: Hoi Polloi Theater Company

Director: Alec Duffy
​Set Design: Mimi Lien
Lighting Design: Yi Zhao
Costume Design: Oana Botez
Venue: Manbite Dog Theater, JACK
​Date: February - March 2014

Starring Lori Parquet, Jason Quarles & Jess Barbagallo.

The Republic was a brain child of director Alec Duffy.  It was a dense text which walked the audience through what it would be like to construct the perfect city delivered in a modern jargon style.  As the piece developed we went out on a conceptual limb: when the play's middle section turns into the dreamy realization of this perfect society all actor text becomes voice over.  The actors at this point use their bodies and movement give action to an extended musical odyssey.  This foray into the borderlands between movement, sound, and theater ends for the final act where acoustic voices signal that our journey is complete.  
This piece was an exiting challenge and some of the most adventurous work I've done.  All sonic content was manufactured from recordings of Faye Victor performing abstractions from the Epitaph of Seikilos.  This was also the first piece where I arrived at the concept of organism vis a vis similarity.  The thought was that if all sounds came from a common source, no matter how abstracted they became, they would inhabit the same world.  This idea led to a rich, coherent,  and sometimes alien sound world