Junk-yard operas in secret locations.
Four Larks is a trio of American and Australian performance makers. Mat Diafos Sweeney, Jesse Rasmussen and Sebastian Peters-Lazaro met in Los Angeles in 2006, and have created immersive 'junkyard operas' in and around Melbourne and San Francisco. They work collaboratively to create visually spectacular theater with a musical backbone, devised from found objects and adapted texts. Four Larks has collected multiple awards and their work has topped critics' lists on both sides of the Pacific.
"the first time you witness a production by Four Larks is a little like stumbling upon a Brigadoon-like village; one that has somehow existed in isolation from the mainstream yet has developed a complete set of traditions, rituals and aesthetics on its own...These are fully-fledged operas growing from the detritus of contemporary culture."
real time
"each time I skip down the cobbled lane that leads to their discrete theatre space, I feel as though I've discovered something new, that I've stumbled on some out-of-the-way truth."
crikey
"a company whose comprehensively reconstructed notion of the immersive Gesamtkunstwerk has produced some of the most inspiring and original art I've ever seen."
arts hub
"again and again we hear that there are no companies in Melbourne doing what the Four Larks are doing. What are they doing? Singing? Dancing? Playing? They are engaging with their audience as if with fellow poets and philosophers, perhaps the most generous of all possible theatrical gestures, and certainly the most rewarding."
primitive surveys
