The Little Match Girl

Improbable / Blind Summit / Spoleto Festival

The Little Match Girl premiered at the Spoleto Festival, Charleston (29 May – 4 June 2016).

• Directed by Phelim McDermott and Mark Down
• Designed by Matt Saunders
• Conducted by John Kennedy
• Lighting by Jim Ingalls
• Puppet design by Ruth Paton
• Music and Libretto by Helmut Lachenmann
• With the Westminster Choir and Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra
• Photography by Adam Klein

Elevated on a platform and encircling the audience, 106 members of the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra perform this astonishingly evocative score, full of clicks, crackles, knocks, and hisses, under the baton of Resident Conductor and Director of Orchestral Activities John Kennedy.

Co-directors Phelim McDermott and Mark Down cast extraordinary shadows to make a show that almost isn’t there, lit by the light of a match and performed at the speed of scissors.