Two-Headed/Half-Hearted
Winner of the Summer Solstice Indigenous Music Award for “Music in the Arts” and Finalist for the Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award for Drama.
Two-Headed/Half Hearted: a musical song cycle that details the lives of Juno and Venus Hollis, conjoined twins and daughters of Jupiter Hollis and his mermaid wife, Ida Mae. A prairie-gothic tale of isolation, mythology, family and yearning sung by two musical narrators, Two-Headed/Half-Hearted interweaves stories and songs of the twins’ birth, life and death with that of other famous conjoined twins through history. With book by Trevor Schmidt and music by Kaeley Jade Wiebe, Two-Headed/Half-Hearted asks the question: Can one heart be torn apart and survive?
Anchored in country gospel and traditional folk, the music of Two-Headed/Half-Hearted explores a surprising variety of genres like vaudeville, music hall and bluegrass as it moves fluidly between intimate acoustic ballads like “Only Me,” and “A Broken Heart (Remembers the Breaking), eerie, goose-bump-raising melodies in songs like “Amabie” and toe-tapping numbers like “Daisy and Violet” and “The Ballad of Chang and Eng.”
“By turns charming, funny, horrifying, sweet and sad, Northern Light Theatre’s Two-Headed/Half-Hearted pulls on emotional muscles you never thought you had. ”
Original Cast & Creative Team
Director & Playwright: Trevor Schmidt
Original Music & Composition: Kaeley Jade Wiebe
Featuring: Kaeley Jade Wiebe as Venus Hollis & Rebecca Sadowski as Juno Hollis
Costume Designer: Deanna Finnman
Lighting Designer: Roy Jackson
Stage Manager: Nyssa Beairsto
Production Manager: Rae Dunn McCallum
“Two-Headed/Half-Hearted kind of sneaks up on you at this threshhold moment in our history, when we miss human connection and long for it and fear it. It’s theatrically sly and piquant, and it breaks your own heart a little too.”