MADAME MOZART, THE LACRIMOSA Will Play Gloucester Stage Company

Madame Mozart, the Lacrimosa, a new play by Anne Undeland, will premiere at Gloucester Stage Company from October 9–19. Directed by Punctuate4 Artistic Director Myriam Cyr, the production explores Constanze Mozart’s unique experience of synesthesia, transforming Mozart’s music into a vibrant world of color, sensation, and emotion. Audiences will be immersed in a theatrical dreamscape that fuses light, sound, and storytelling.

“The idea to give my protagonist, Constanze Mozart, synesthesia came to me as one of those 4 AM flashes of inspiration we playwrights live for,” said Undeland. “Since Madame Mozart is, unsurprisingly, a play about music, I had been wrestling with how to make the act of listening theatrically interesting and emotionally involving. When I go to theater, I want to see something big. I want to feel it.”

Synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon in which a stimulus to one sense triggers an involuntary experience in another. A synesthete might see the color green and smell bananas, or touch velvet and taste chocolate. Most commonly known is sound-color synesthesia, where music translates visually into colors. “It was the perfect solution to my writing dilemma,” Undeland continued. “Not only does giving Constanze synesthesia provide a marvelous opportunity to a talented lighting designer, it strengthens the bond between Constanze and Wolfgang, and above all, it puts us, the audience, inside Constanze’s head — we literally see what she sees, feel what she feels. It is beautiful and incredibly moving.”