Mind on Fire presents a compelling and immersive interior journey

Heather Morrison is Elyria in Nobody is Ever Missing, presented by Mind on Fire at Voxel Theatre in Baltimore. Photo: Chris Ashworth
Mind on Fire, led by music director James Young, premiered a series of works by the composer Tim Holt Friday night at Baltimore’s Voxel Theatre. In this hour-long immersive production the contemporary chamber ensemble blurred the line between audience and performance.
The first piece, Nobody is Ever Missing, is based on Catherine Lacey’s 2014 novel of the same name. Holt’s adaptation offers a fleeting glimpse at the novel’s story of Elyria, a woman who finds herself wandering about New Zealand consumed by her own thoughts after abandoning her upper-middle class life.
The second premiere, Holt’s song cycle Anchorites for four unaccompanied voices was interspersed with the opera. A focused production brought these improbable elements together in an intimate theater piece on loneliness and self-exploration.
Holt’s score brings into relief the melancholy undercurrents in Lacey’s novel. Halting musical figures for strings and clarinet (pre-recorded) convey aimlessness, while circular vocal lines mirror the character’s churning thoughts. A series of solo percussion interludes, impressively performed live by Shelly Purdy, served as a disorienting counterweight to this static background. There is not much of a musical or emotional arc here, nor a variety of tonalities. (Some bits of wry observation are carried over from the novel but don’t entirely land). Instead, Holt’s brief score is singularly concerned with, and succeeds at, precisely distilling the feeling of the nothingness and drift of wandering alone with your thoughts.
As Elyria, soprano Heather Morrison held the unconventional playing space with confidence, finding compelling ways to portray Elyria’s roaming thoughts. Morrison reduced her sound to a fragile, breathy line that captured the character’s constant self-negation and yearning to disappear, though opportunities to introduce a richer expression and tone in moments of deeper introspection didn’t feel fully realized.

Photo: Chris Ashworth
The most memorable musical elements of the evening may have been the pieces from the “Anchorites” song cycle that complemented the themes of Nobody is Ever Missing. These engrossing works for four voices (on texts by Tao Lin, the medieval figure Julian of Norwich, and John Berryman), hint at medieval chant without devolving into pastiche, the singers’ voices layered in intriguing ways that elaborate on the texts. Singers Kayleigh Sprouse, Kaylee Parker, Cameron Falby, and T.J. Callahan, further enhanced the works in precise performances.
Mind on Fire’s innovative staging, directed by Juanita Rockwell, eliminated the distinction between the audience and the performers’ spaces, as the artists moved between scattered seats and audience members were invited to roam the space at will (though few fully tested this freedom).
Further elements of the production included large video projections by Meg Rorison hinting at Elyria’s journey, abstract scenic elements throughout the space (James Raymond) and moody lighting (Juan Juarez), as well as subtitles projected across the walls. Such “immersive” theater experiences are hard to do well, but the restraint and clarity the production elicited about these private emotions made this performance effective.
Nobody is Ever Missing will be repeated at the Voxel Theatre in Baltimore 8 p.m. Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday. voxel.org