Quit Bitchin'
Written by Anna Marjorie Fitzgerald
Composer: Jeremiah Tuner
Director: Juliette Carrillo
Sound Designer: Melanie Falcón
Scenic Designer: Rojin Bolandbakht
Lighting Designer: Aria Roach
Costume Designer: Christian Alvarez
Stage Manager: Daniel Rosales
University of California, Irvine Department of Drama
2023-2024 Season
Artistic Direction
Quit Bitchin' follows the story of 6 women, in a rural town, and how their lives intertwined. These are not mere 6 women though, they are modern representations of women from Greek mythology. Although these are women living in modern times, there are portions of the show when they flashback into their mythological counterparts. The show tackles themes of love, struggle, and most importantly rage. The show revolves around female rage, our characters' rage, and how that shows up in their every day lives. For us, as a design team, our goals for this show were two fold; representing the rage of our characters onstage, and seamlessly moving from when the characters are their modern counterparts to their mythological versions.
Me supervising a take of one of the songs with Irene Messoloras conducting
Photo credit: Vincent Olivieri
As the composer, the director and I came to the agreement that the actors would sing live for the interludes as a vocal representation of their rage. The challenge was composing pieces and a lyrical language that had an ancient feel to them. We also decided to record an ensemble in addition to the actors as we wanted to build the scale of the interlude scenes to be larger, and have a backing track that the actors can sing over during the show to stay on tempo and in pitch.
Photo credit: Vincent Olivieri
Melanie and I reviewing takes from the recording session
Sheet Music
Messoloras and I discussing notes between takes during the recording session
Photo credit: Vincent Olivieri
I worked in collaboration Irene Messoloras, Director of Choral Activities at the music department at UC Irvine, to gather an ensemble together to record the pieces for the show. I decided to record with a full female ensemble to keep with the themes of the show, and due to the fact that only women would be singing live during the show. During the recording session, Sound Designer Melanie Falcòn engineered the recording session
while I produced and consulted with the conductor.
Prelude
This is the top of show sequence. This piece introduces us into to the world of the show, and the internal rage of the characters. In this moment, we are shown the characters as their mythological counterparts. For lyrics, rather than using words, I wrote them as vowels and consonants. It was more important, to me, for the audience to focus on the melody of the song and the movement that accompanied it. These were the driving forces to represent our characters' rage. To keep the energy, and rage, of the piece, I used various percussive elements throughout the track.
Photo credit: Jasmin Miranda
Interlude #1
Photo credit: Jasmin Miranda
In this interlude, we see the characters close to being their most rageful. Up until this point of the show, the characters have been in a wave of rage. Their emotions crescendo to a boiling point, and then decrescendo back to normal. I wanted to build a piece that reflected that in the energy and pace that they snag.
Interlude #3
This interlude takes place towards the end of the show. The characters have struggled yes, but they are all getting to a point of reconciliation and peace. Although the past interludes have been filled with pain and rage, this interlude is supposed to give us a sense of hope and closure that the characters feel.
Photo credit: Jasmin Miranda