Drawing from Walt Whitman's intimate love poem to America, "Song of Myself" — written in 1855 when he was 36 years old — creator and director Karin Coonrod and composers Colin Jacobsen, Kyle Sanna and Eric Jacobsen craft this artistic declaration of interdependence. In March of 2020, More Or Less I Am was adapted from its live version to create a three-part digital piece commissioned and presented by the International Festival of Arts & Ideas. The piece continues with new installments commissioned by Dartmouth College and Colgate University. Featuring over 50 artists from around the world, More Or Less I Am embodies the Whitmanic voice of the "I" in our joyous diversity to show our nation the possibility of what it could be.

Parts 1–3, composed of seven episodes, will be released weekly beginning Tuesday, February 23rd.

More Or Less I Am

Part 1: JOURNEY, SEEN AND UNSEEN, THE CITY
Episodes 1, 1.5, 2
Tuesday, February 23 at 8 pm ET
 
Let us proclaim it and walk together.
In our community we are all citizens, we are one.
 
Go on a new journey, trusting anew in yourself, bringing into voluptuous embrace what is visible and invisible. We all are citizens and we all have much more in common than not, even the dead with the living. 
 
Part 2: NATURE + DEMOCRACY, INFINITE VARIETY
Episodes 3, 3.5
Tuesday, March 2 at 8 pm ET
 
I play great marches for conquered and slain persons
 
Consider the connectedness of humanity and nature and to cherish our place in the cosmos and the joyous respect for all faiths, together seeing there is something bigger than ourselves.
 
Part 3: GRATITUDE, CONTRADICTIONS
Episodes 4, 4.5
Tuesday, March 9 at 8 pm ET
 
My soul is itself and also everything that the friendly others have given me.
 
Enter into gratitude and into political and spiritual responsibility for the earth.

Pre-Show Talk

Watch the talk with Dartmouth Professor of English Don Pease and Compagnia de' Colombari director Karin Coonrod and performers Michael Potts and Carl Hancock Rux for a deeper look into More Or Less I Am. 

About Compagnia de' Colombari

Compagnia de' Colombari (Company Colombari) is an international collective of performing artists, generating theater in surprising places. Colombari intentionally clashes cultures, traditions and art forms to bring fresh interpretation to the written word — old and new. In 2004, Compagnia de' Colombari was born in Orvieto, Italy, where the company re-imagined the medieval mystery plays and performed them in the streets and piazzas of Orvieto. Having revitalized the tradition of theater during Orvieto's Corpus Christi Festival each spring, the company launched a parallel theatrical tradition in New York, Stranger and Other Angels. Since 2008, the company has created and performed More Or Less I Am, Everything That Rises Must Converge, The World Is Round Is Round Is Round, Andras Visky's Giulia, Monteverdi's Orfeo, and Karin Coonrod's Texts&Beheadings/Elizabeth R. 

Compagnia de' Colombari's More or Less I Am — Directed and Adapted by Karin Coonrod — composed by Colin Jacobsen, Kyle Sanna and Eric Jacobsen — edited by Paul Lieber. Co-Commissioned by Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College and Colgate University.

Photos: courtesy of the artists