sin-eater

music by David T. Little
presented by Penn Live Arts

Saturday, October 14 @ 8pm
Sunday, October 15 @ 3pm and 7pm

Harold Prince Theatre at The Annenberg Center, University of Pennsylvania

presented by Penn Live Arts

bread, wine, outcast, rich, poor, cleansing;
the source of our season title;
who are our gatekeepers / who are our friends?

David T. Little describes Sin-Eater as a “work of ritual music-theatre for choir and string quartet, exploring the nature of power in western civilization through its connection to food and consumption.” The idea of the sin-eater derives from Welsh folklore in which a person of low class would be paid to take on the sins of a person of a higher class by way of consuming a loaf of bread and bowl of beer, which had ritually absorbed the wealthier person’s sins in a kind of “inverted Eucharist in which the rich exploit the poor for spiritual gain.”

In the broad, dramatic strokes of a grand oratorio for choir and string quartet, David’s new work asks the question, “Who are our sin-eaters today, sacrificing for the comforts of others?”