Re-Release Party (The Golden Record)

Re-Release Party is rooted in a project in 1977 led by Carl Sagan and a dynamic team of scientists and artists who created the Golden Record, a phonograph record which attempts to communicate the story of life on earth for extraterrestrials and future humans. The record, filled with messages from world leaders, greetings in many languages, pictures and sounds from earth, and a sampling of our music, was launched aboard the Voyager space probes on their interstellar reconnaissance mission, which continues to this day.

In an evening that travels through time and space, A Host of People will evoke the original team’s story, while creating a new one--asking the audience to imagine what it is to communicate our vast, yet puny, existence to aliens and to ourselves. Through artifacts from the original record, video transmissions, imagistic journeys, poetry and interviews, strange dances and original music, each performance will re-release a new Golden Record for that specific night, in that particular place, with the humans in that room. As with all A Host of People shows, a party will unfold, celebrating both life here and the possible lives out there in this vast and awesome universe.

Conceived and directed by Sherrine Azab & Jake Hooker

Created with: Performers: Aja Salakastar Dier, Torri Lynn Frances, Emily Harpe, Chris Jakob, Sam Watson, & Renee Willoughby

Stage Manager & Choreographic Consultant: Maddy Rager

Dorothy Melander-Dayton, Set & Costume Designer
Chantel Gaidica, Lighting Designer and Production Manager
Billy Mark, Original music and Sound Designer
Jake Hooker and Renee Willoughby, Projection Designers
Carolyn Mraz, Dramaturgical Consultant

Produced by John Del Gaudio

Photos: Andrew Miller

Re-Release Party was supported in part by Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, The Mental Insight Foundation, and The Puffin Foundation.