The Judas Cradle

From the legendary US performance artist Ron Athey and operatic soprano musicologist Juliana Snapper comes a highly original new work ‘The Judas Cradle’. In the past we've seen Athey confronting the stigma and iconography of HIV/AIDS, public sex, self-harm, incest and suicide with physically and emotionally confrontational productions including 'Deliverance' and 'Jovce'

Now in The Judas Cradle he and Snapper perform an operatic drama using both body and voice that explores the history of torture and personal suffering: from the choreographed "pornography" of Abu Ghraib, the auto da fe of the Spanish Inquisition, and finally into the melancholic’s realm, making an extraordinary spectacle from the politics of torture and release.

The Judas Cradle was a medieval torture device created as a "kinder, gentler" replacement for other bone breaking, blood-letting and flesh burning instruments of torture. Victims were suspended in a harness over a pyramid-like structure and lowered down on pulleys as sleep approached. Over time weights were gradually added to the arms and legs so the orifice was eventually impaled and split. Athey creates and performs over this barbaric instrument, whilst undergoing an operatic inquisition from Snapper to create an extraordinary series of images and ideas around suffering, sacrifice and transcendence.

The Judas Cradle's multi-lingual libretto is built from disparate sources, including the transcripts of Inquisition hearings, opera quotes, and Jean Genet's closing statement of the witness (from Prisoner of Love). Vocal techniques include high-pitched duets, Mae west-inspired Debussy, and spirit-induced glossolalia (speaking in tongues).