Let Us Now Praise Susan Sontag

Set in the Great Depression, Sibyl Kempson’s Let Us Now Praise Susan Sontag is a story of an extended family of sharecroppers who are visited, interviewed, and photographed by two live-in reporters from the “Big City” and also possibly by an ancient Mesopotamian sage. An irrational musical contemplation of the ethical pitfalls of poetic journalism, Let Us Now Praise Susan Sontag is inspired by the work of James Agee and Walker Evans as well as Sontag’s essay ‘On Photography,’ the journals of Symbolist painter Odilon Redon, The NEW American Machinists’ Handbook, the ancient Assyrian mythological seals in the JP Morgan Collection, and a couple of Broadway musicals. Featuring music by Ashley Turba and staging by David Neumann.