Tetra Nova tells the story of Lua Mater an obscure Roman goddess who reimagines herself as an assassin coming to terms with an emerging performance artist identity in the late20th century The operatic text begins in Saigon where she meets a little girl named Emi an American of VietnameseJapanese descent visiting her mothers country for the first time since the waramp8217s end As the voices of Lua and Emi blend into one dissociated narration the stories accelerate out of sequence mapping upon the globe a series of collective memories and traumas passed from one generation to the nextamp10Darting between the temples of Nagasaki the mountains of Tucson and an island refugee camp off the coast of Malaysia Lua and Emi in one embodied memory travel across the English language itself to make sense of a history neither wanted When a tiny Panda named Panda suddenly arrives fate intervenes and the work acts as a larger historical document unpacking legacies of genocide and the radical modes of resistance that followamp10At the heart of this production lies a postcolonial identity in exile and the performers must come to terms with who may or may not carry their stories forward Emi or Lua Part dreamscape part investigative poetics multiple fragmenting identities traverse across time and space the mythic and the profane toward an understanding of humanity beyond those temple chamber doors
