The Song Company: Mind Over Matter

Man against the machine in a musical comedy from the golden age of pop. A zany and toonful chamber opera about two lifts and a computer virus in a bed of 1980s pop gold served up by five singers, two speakers, and four hands at one piano.

A cartoonesque prequel to Anna’s Rapid Eye Movement (premiered by The Song Company in Sydney Opera House), Mind Over Matter is a chamber opera for five singers, speaking piano duet and computer operator, by the Company’s Artistic Director, Antony Pitts, with theatrical direction by Leonie Cambage. The story is set (not far) in the future: the world has been taken over by a giant computer corporation called Babel, run by a man known simply as “the Boss”, and, of course, someone is trying to hack into its central computer system. Babel’s corporate headquarters has 127 floors and just two lifts (with characters of their own). The music is inspired by the melodic pop of the 1980s and the program begins and ends with arrangements of some classic hits from Joe Jackson’s Stepping Out to Wang Chung’s Dance Hall Days.