22/07/2026
Update from the Creative Director - June Tyzack
Hello everyone
I’m excited to announce that A Fist Full of Wits will give the Australian premiere of Soliloquy by Chilean composer, Martín Letelier, in its Happening on Saturday 15th August.
I’m excited not only because we’ll premiere this work but because of the nature of this composition, perhaps falling in a genre of its own. It is essentially the reading of Edgar Allan Poe’s chilling horror story The Tell-Tale Heart, but Letelier has given Poe’s words a rhythm and sometimes a pitch: it is sometimes sung and elsewhere sprechgesang (a spoken singing technique), and sometimes it is freely spoken out loud.
Letelier enhances the drama of this suspense-filled psychological thriller with six voices. They add appropriate colour to specific moments, reinforcing the text or creating a soundscape as a backdrop to the developing story.
The protagonist proceeds to tell the story in the first person. This is assigned to a narrator, and we are fortunate to have Tony Marshall narrating this story. For those of you who don’t know Tony, he is a book worm and can sometimes be seen walking the street, reading! He is also a valued member of the TSO Chorus, and his outstanding musicianship is essential in this complex work.
The narrator/protagonist asks us to believe he is of sound mind while he retells the events that led to him committing a gruesome murder of an old man, because of his eye! He was obsessed with this eye, telling us it was pale blue with a film over it, hideous, evil, and resembling a vulture’s eye.
This reference to a vulture is how Soliloquy found its way into my program titled F|OWL.
We’re drawn in and stay with the narrator’s every word to know how, when, and perhaps ‘if’ he carried out this heinous crime. “How then am I mad?”
Mental instability is a human condition and we’re fortunate to be in an era talking about mental awareness, unlike in Poe’s lifetime and the stigma around his own mental battles.
Letelier divides the story into three sections: Thoughts, Voices, and Actions. Soliloquy finishes before Poe’s story ends, but I have asked Tony to continue reading so that we learn whether the protagonist confesses or not. This will segue into Dido’s Lament - ”Remember me! But ah! Forget my fate.”
Thought provoking.
I do hope you will be able to join us on Saturday 15th August (6pm & 8pm) in the Founders Room at Salamanca for all things foul and fowl.
Thank you
