There are two possible ways of reading the word ‘plastic’. It can be that material we all once found so useful and which is now wreaking havoc in the natural world. But it can also mean ‘adaptable’, ‘fluid’, ‘malleable’. What attracted me most about Katie Schaag’s text, a five part poem scripted as a drama written out as a drama, was the way she explores both possibilities: one alarming (our destructive potential), the other affirming (the amazing adaptability of nature, and of our own minds—‘neuroplasticity’), but without either preachiness or exaggerated ‘positivity’.

In keeping with Katie Schaag’s theatrical conception, A Plastic Theatre is divided into five distinct ‘acts’. The first plays with the idea of plastic objects as ‘abandoned’—hazardous, but also strangely poignant. In Act II it becomes an emblem of our own dreams, longings, and greed, in music which both pushes forward restlessly yet seems trapped in its own endlessly repeating cycle. A disturbing pathos emerges in Act III in which plastic seems almost human, while human beings lose themselves ever more in the synthetic. In Act IV the libretto’s parody of academic verbosity is balanced by my music in which I take the tone of a child’s bed-time story. Finally, Act V explores the increasingly confused states of our relationship with nature. I felt that the ending needed to be exciting but ambiguous: does the final ‘plunge into the rushing current’ hold out the possibility of adventure, discovery? Or is it much more ominous?

A Plastic Theatre was co-commissioned by Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society and Trondheim Symphony Orchestra and Opera with the Australian premiere with Vox, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs sponsored by Peter McCreanor.

from notes by Joanna Marsh © 2025