ODMA

ODMA 
@
Jauna Muzika
Vilnius, Lithuania
Arts printing House, Black Hall
24/04, 18.30

Michał Libera – composition, libretto, recordings
Barbara Kinga Majewska – composition, tableau vivant, voice

ODMA (in Polish odma means “pulmonary emphysema”) is a tableau vivant with a soundtrack based on the late Franz Kafka’s novel Josephine, the Singer or The Mouse Folk, one of his most visionary sonic inquiries. It is a story of highly admired, as well as controversial singing-whistling virtuoso – Josephine, a mouse in the nation of mice, who is very likely not to have ever made any sound at all. ODMA is a study of her dubious talent. It takes into account biographical facts from Kafka’s late years when he was suffering from tuberculosis which strongly affected his speech. Visually, the performance is inspired by one of the photographs taken in the tuberculosis sanatorium. It captures a patient undergoing sun treatment – an enduring, everlasting, motionless process of curing one’s throat. ODMA turns it into a tableau vivant, in which one of the actors is an exquisite Polish singer, Barbara Kinga Majewska.