OR119 2023

In this new collaborative work, the legacy of renegade scientist and social thinker Wilhelm Reich gets the musical treatment it has long deserved, thanks to filmmakers Peggy Ahwesh and Jacqueline Goss, and an ensemble of co-conspirators including composer Zach Layton and performers Cecilia Aldarondo, Laith Ayogu, Lana Lin, Jennifer Montgomery, and Marianne Shaneen, among many others. A student and protégé of Freud’s, and one of the most radical figures in the history of psychotherapy, Reich famously claimed to have discovered orgone, a form of life energy pervading the universe. Shot in his home and laboratory in Rangeley, Maine, OR119 transmutes Reich’s writings into song, while also conjuring into existence a series of impossible encounters between Reich and a selection of contemporary feminist writers. A theoretical musical that’s as playful and liberating as it is formally challenging and intellectually provocative, OR119 is suffused with its own unique artistic life force.