In Carcinize!, a famous female pilot (maybe the one you’re thinking of—maybe not) crash lands on a desert island. While she adjusts to a new life outside of the prying eyes of the public, she must also contend with the mysterious desires and histories of the island’s skittering hivemind of crabs, who refuse to give her solitude. Carcinize! is a fantasia on crustacean themes, exploring the illusion of choice on the scale of macrohistory.

​While a crash is often an ending,
here it is the beginning,
as the crabs and
the pilot become
one
and
​many.

---

Link to Score

The Team

MURPHY SEVERTSON,
​Composer

Murphy Severtson is a performance artist, composer, and teaching artist whose work is inspired by queer and trans joy and despair, climate change, Florida, crustaceans, breath, and repetition. Other recent projects include performing at The Brick Aux in Mack Lawrence’s DINNER, and production assistant for Paul Pinto’s Mano a Mano at La MaMa. An avid and passionate educator, they work as a teaching artist at the New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers Program, Little Orchestra, and Opera on Tap.

GEORGE LANDAU-PINCUS,
Librettist

George Landau-Pincus is a multidisciplinary artist and archivist based in Brooklyn. His art practice includes poetry, collage, comics, crafting, puppet design, music, and visual art. He is interested in the interplay of analog and digital mediums, treating “lowbrow” art as both inspiration and interlocutor, and work that engages seriously with archival primary sources. His most recent archival work explores ideas of archival and curatorial alienation, specifically in performing arts archives, diving into the Brechtian murkiness that separates a performance from its recorded memory.