“Weightless” is a rock rewrite of a story from Ovid’s “Metamorphosis.”
When Kate Kilbane says she’s “not much of a classics nerd at all,” her husband, Dan Moses — who performs with Kilbane as indie rock duo the Kilbanes — just laughs.
“You should see the classics nerds I hang out with!” Kilbane protests. She doesn’t even know all of Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” the source material for “Weightless,” the Kilbanes’ latest rock opera.
“You and I just have different bars for what it means to be a classics nerd,” says Moses, 43, in an interview at the couple’s North Oakland home, which they share with their toddler, Hazel.
Nerd or not, Kilbane, 38, knows enough to have zeroed in on one myth in the Roman poet’s sprawling collection, that of sisters Procne and Philomela; to capitalize on its extraordinary qualities; and, hopefully, to fix its unsatisfying ones in their adaptation, now in previews and opening Feb. 28 at Z Space, co-presented by Piece by Piece Productions.
Solving the myth’s problems has been a long process. The Kilbanes first presented a version of “Weightless” at the 2012 San Francisco Fringe Festival, then performed a concert version of it at Z Space in 2016.
But as the show has evolved, many central traits have remained consistent. “Weightless” centers on a female relationship that never devolves into a catfight, that never loses its grounding in abiding love, even as a menacing man, Tereus ( Josh Pollock), comes between Procne (Kilbane) and Philomela (Lila Blue). The Kilbanes tell that story with strippeddown, catchy melodies and simple, evocative lyrics, with musicians doubling as actors. Bandmates never put down their instruments, instead playing them while also playing a character. “Part of our project as artists in general, like the uber-project for us,” says Kilbane, “is how to write a musical that doesn’t feel like a musical.”
The moment in the original Ovid that drew the couple to the myth is when Philomela can communicate only by weaving a tapestry. “Her tongue’s been cut out, she’s lost her voice, and she finds a way to speak
anyway,” says Kilbane. Discovering that, “both of us were just like, holy s—,” says Moses.
But other parts of the story irked Kilbane and Moses. “In the original, they cook a baby,” says Kilbane. “That got adapted out very early.” The couple has already taken on related subject matter, with “The Medea Cycle,” in 2008. With “Weightless,” says Kilbane, “my mother-in-law was like... is the woman going to kill a baby? Where are you on the infanticide situation?”
Other changes weren’t so simple, like how to deal with meddling gods, a storytelling device that doesn’t always resonate with modern audiences.
Gods “of course float all over the ‘Metamorphoses,’ mostly wreaking havoc and paying exactly not at all for it,” says Kilbane. “They fall in love with human beings when they happen to — capriciousness and coincidence! — stay as long as they want, tear people’s lives apart and then leave.”
“Which is what it feels like in life sometimes,” adds Moses.
In “Weightless,” a god (played by Julia Brothers) appears as a narrator, filling in storytelling gaps between songs. But in early incarnations of the show, that device felt clunky to Kilbane and Moses. “One thing we knew we wanted to clarify was who is telling this story and why,” says Kilbane.
The pair solved both problems — the gods’ impunity and the narrator god’s identity — after Kilbane’s father, Tom Porter, died, in 2015. (An English professor at University of Texas at Arlington, he helped inspire Kilbane’s interest in classics and myths. He told her “The Odyssey” as a bedtime story when she was a child; she thought he had made it up himself.)
After Porter died, Kilbane says, “I had this moment where I realized, all I want is ... to stand face to face with God for one minute, and I want God to look at me and understand what it is to be human. Like, f— you, doing this to us. F— you, putting us in a position where we have to lose one another.”
She decided she wanted something similar at the end of “Weightless,” “where Philomela and the god see each other ... It doesn’t solve it. It doesn’t fix it. But I think it’s the thing I want from the ‘Metamorphoses’ that I never get. The worlds” — that of gods and that of humans — “are constantly, chaotically mingled, but there’s never a moment of reckoning between them. The gods get away every time.”