Night Sky with exit wounds

Kaneza Schaal, Bryce Dessner, and their collaborators spent a week in Chapel Hill embarking on an operatic exploration of Ocean Voung's collection of poetry 'Night Sky with Exit Wounds'. Together, they transcended conventional design boundaries toward a universe where live music, poetry, and visual art found a seamless, deeply charged flow.

About Night Sky with exit wounds

In residency January 2025

Carolina Performing Arts hosted Kaneza Schaal, Bryce Dessner, Fleur Barron and a talented group of local and visiting musicians, sound engineers, and producers for a week of creative experimentation in January 2025. This residency week was the first time that the creative team had held space together to ideate, share, and understand how their disparate but complimentary contributions could meld into something new. The something in question was a sonic and visual interpretation of Vietnamese American poet and novelist Ocean Vuong‘s collection of poetry, Night Sky with Exit Wounds. The week ended with an in-progress showing with a live audience and facilitated conversations with UNC faculty members Heidi Kim and Anna Gatdula.

Vuong’s poetry served as the libretto for the work, specifically the poem ‘Immigrant Haibun.’ Mezzo soprano Fleur Barron embodied this story of a woman on a journey and composer Bryce Dessner created a rich and emotional sonic landscape to support Fleur’s vocals. Visual and material artwork from Tuan Andrew Nguyen and Christopher Myers grounded the work in the place of Vietnam and the history of violence, war, and what comes after. Nguyen fabricated a collection of bells made from undetonated weapons left over from the American War in Vietnam gathered from the Vietnamese countryside. These bells, played by Fleur throughout the performance, stood as a material representation of the ways in which many of us must grapple with the remnants of war and what it means to create a life in the wake of the unimaginable.

Night Sky with Exit Wounds will make its stage debut in 2027.

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  • A bell by artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen. Photo by Kent Corley.
  • Bells by artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen being played by Fleur Barron. Photo by Kent Corley.
  • The bottom of a bell by artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen. Photo by Kent Corley.
  • Bells by artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen behind the ensemble. Photo by Kent Corley.

Meet the Collaborators

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Inspired by Ocean Vuong: Student Poetry

English and Comparative Literature faculty member Carlina Duan brought her Intermediate Poetry class to Night Sky with Exit Wounds. The class had read Vuong's work and was excited to engage with the poetry and the subject matter in a new form. A group of students shared poems inspired by Vuong's work and their reflections of witnessing the in-progress showing of Night Sky with Exit Wounds.

Hear from the Students and Read their Poetry
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Night Sky and Local North Carolinian Southeast Asian Stories

CPA's Amanda Graham, Associate Director of Engagement, and the Carolina Asia Center's Becky Butler, Assistant Director of Southeast Asia Initiatives, gathered with a group at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill for a public conversation about Vuong’s work, the operatic adaptation-in-progress, and its resonances with the histories and experiences of communities from Southeast Asia living across North Carolina.

Listen to the Conversation

Photos of Night Sky with Exit Wounds

  • Photo by Kent Corley.
  • Ben Lanz. Photo by Kent Corley.
  • Bryce Dessner. Photo by Kent Corley.
  • Ben Lanz with Fleur Barron playing Tuan Andrew Nguyen's bells in the background. Photo by Kent Corley.
  • Fleur Barron. Photo by Kent Corley.
  • Ben Lanz. Photo by Kent Corley.
  • Bryce Dessner. Photo by Kent Corley.
  • Fleur Barron plays a bell made by Tuan Andrew Nguyen. Photo by Kent Corley.
  • Bryce Dessner, Fleur Barron, and Kaneza Schaal in conversation with Anna Gatdula. Photo by Kent Corley.
  • Professor Anna Gatdula speaks to the audience. Photo by Kent Corley.

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