Analyzing language as a sounding performance, we find that writing systems encode bodies in ways that both broaden the possibilities of performance and establish limitations. Each human language narrows the infinite range of vocal performance to a set repertoire of articulations in order to create an operable code. This paradox haunts performance as a space for freedom and a continuous call to socialization: There’s no single human language that makes use of every possible sound of the mouth—Spanish lacks the “sh” sound, English lacks the “ñ” sound—but this limitation creates a frame which makes possible symbolic relations for meaning building (house, household, housing).
A complicated version of freedom explores the potentiality of different languages—not for what they mean but for how they sound. How might a theatre piece take advantage of four different languages conceived as musical instruments, each one with its own unique potential?
A complicated version of freedom attempts to compose such a utopic piece. Analyzing different mappings of the sounds in Mandarin, Korean, Farsi, and Spanish, I arranged a composition that releases slow transformations that incrementally unravel different compositional games as a minimalistic vocal piece. After the phonetic aspect of the composition was realized, I asked the performers/native speakers to transcribe the work using their own writing systems. This led to a unique score written in eight hands: an impossible script for a single author. It is imperative to show its handwritten quality to fully convey the richness of such a collective labor.
Between these spoken landscapes appear some discourses written by each performer in their own native language about what is it to be free in New York and what is it to be free back in their respective hometowns. A second performer imitates the initial speech in their own language, finding words that phonetically resemble the source but which unleash a completely different and unexpected new meaning.
A complicated version of freedom is a theatre piece that pays homage to the best of New York City: its multiculturalism. To be together is to invoke a potentiality that we neglect by separating our communities. It might be complicated, but it is nurturing and fun. A complicated version of freedom is one possible way to play together in a global world without disregarding the singularity of our cultures that enrich us as humans.