Patria (theatre)

Patria is a cycle of music-theatre works written over a period of 40 years by R. Murray Schafer. The title derives from the Latin word for "homeland". The cycle is framed by a prologue "The Princess of the Stars" and an epilogue And Wolf Shall Inherit the Moon, and includes ten other major works. All twelve of the works place heavy emphasis on the location of performance. The third production in the series, "", was adapted into the film "Carnival of Shadows". The cycle is in a continual state of evolution as participants of And Wolf Shall Inherit the Moon return to perform the work each summer, revising the content of the performance to accommodate the current environment of the site and needs of the performance community.
History.
In 1966, Schafer originally conceived of "Patria" as a bipartite work, where the two halves would be performed simultaneously on separate stages. Instead, the two halves became Patria 1 and 2. By 1979, Schafer began to think of "Patria" as a cycle of six works. By 1990, the cycle settled into its current form of a dozen works.