FRATERNITY OF DECEIT

A Chamber Music Drama
Michael Kowalski, Music and Text

Fraternity of Deceit presents a variety of behaviors familiar to big city dwellers of the late twentieth century: the dissembling, the phoniness, the bullying, the stealthy guile, the bluster, the feigned loyalty, the inadvertent collusion with those whose politics we vehemently oppose, and the clumsy attempts at kindness hidden behind rigidly codified male bonding rituals. Ever faster cashflows and relentless transformations in the nature of work have begotten the technological man, a person strangely devoid of memory or sensual experience, perhaps even unaware of their absence, but not yet dead to desire or conscience. Non-commercial institutions — family, social welfare, medicine, art — have all gone through an almost dreamlike decay in America. It's not clear what values beyond those of the marketplace will shape the future. This work presents the archetypal milieu of the struggle to define those values, complete with a love triangle no less tawdry for its comic triviality.

The Postindustrial Players were founded by Michael Kowalski in 1995. They are a small band of singers, instrumentalists, and theater artists dedicated to the development of intimate sung dramas which combine the impact of live theater with the clarity of film close-ups, and the liveliness of avant-garde with the suaveness of American pop classics. The original cast can be heard on their 1996 debut release, Still in Love (EQ6).