Audible Songs From Rockwood was created by Simone Schmidt with direction from Frank Cox-O’Connell, design by Shannon Lea Doyle and Michelle Tracey, and performed by musicians Carlie Howell, Laura C. Bates and Simone Schmidt. This performance was adapted from an album of the same name by Fiver (Simone Schmidt). The album Audible Songs From Rockwood is based on Schmidt’s extensive research of the history of the Rockwood Asylum for the Criminally Insane in the colony of Upper Canada between 1856-1881. Schmidt specifically focused on the case files of the people incarcerated at the institution and allowed the information that was recorded, and omitted, to inform the content of The Audible Songs From Rockwood.
“(The Album) took me 2 years to research and another year to write and is accompanied by 30 pages of liner notes. I toured the album for about a year and a half,. Over the course of performing it (April 2017-October 2017) I started to talk more and more between songs, wringing out my mind of the research and conflict of the project. I realized I wasn’t finished with the material.”
-Fiver, Facebook Post on Fiver’s page from June 24 2019
Shannon Lea Doyle 