Details

Composer Jocelyn Pook's great aunt Phyllis Williams spent much of her life in an asylum struggling to make sense of the voices she heard. She recorded her experiences in a series of diaries and notebooks. Hearing Voices combines Phyllis's testimony with that of four other women diagnosed with mental illness, spanning several generations: artists Bobby Baker and Julie McNamara; Mary Pook, another of Jocelyn's relatives; and seamstress Agnes Richter, who stitched cryptic texts into a jacket she wore in a German asylum at the turn of the last century. Singer Melanie Pappenheim duets live with recordings of the women's words, protests and laughter and striking visuals from Dragan Aleksic.

Creatives/Company

Author: Jocelyn Pook
Conductor: Charles Hazlewood