Roulette TV sits down with Gelsey Bell and Erik Ruin to discuss their performance at Roulette, the way in which they developed this piece, and how the piece is meant to function for a viewer.
Prisoner’s Song is a performance created by composer Gelsey Bell and visual artist Erik Ruin about the prison experience. Using shadow puppets and projections alongside a variety of musical idioms, the piece draws on historic ballads, poetry, audio interviews with people who have spent time in prison, and other primary sources to create a fragmentary encounter with the states of mind and heart prison engenders.
Performance date: 10/14/2015
Gelsey Bell (composer, performer) is a singer, songwriter, and scholar. She has been described by the New York Times as a “winning soprano” whose performance of her own music is “virtuosic” and “glorious noise.” She has released multiple albums and her work has been presented internationally. She is a core member of thingNY and Varispeed. She has also worked with numerous composers, choreographers, and performance creators including Robert Ashley, Matthew Barney and Jonathan Bepler, Kimberly Bartosik, Ne(x)tworks, Dave Malloy, Rachel Chavkin, John King, Chris Cochrane and Fast Forward, Gregory Whitehead, Kate Soper, and Rick Burkhardt, among others.