PAMELA Z
Parts of Speech

Photo: Marion Gray

Parts of Speech is a large scale interdisciplinary solo performance work using extended vocal performance, live electronic sound processing, found text, sampled sounds of speech fragments triggered with a wireless MIDI controller which allows the performer to manipulate sound by making physical gestures, and projected still and moving images.

PARTS OF SPEECH explores the language of asking (begging), the changing language of gender, questioning, grammar (dialect), small talk, coercion, technology, and news media. It examines and makes music of the subtleties of the human speaking voice. Pamela Z appears as narrator, news commentator, storyteller, and cantor in this word ritual. The audience finds themselves in the midst of an aural and visual landscape of queries they can answer in any way they choose. Parts of Speech is a grammar quiz made up entirely of trick questions.