coppelia
 
by Jenifer Toksvig (book & lyrics)
and Dominic Haslam (music)
 
Coppelia is loosely based on E. T. A. Hoffman's gothic short story The Sandman, which inspired Sigmund Freud to write an essay on Das Unheimliche - The Uncanny.
 
'Heimlich' means home-like, familiar. 'Unheimlich' means eerie, strange. The Uncanny is the supervening of an earlier unconscious event upon a later one: the subject experiences something as that which is both strange and familiar, odd but intimate, alien but all too close...
 
Coppelia is the story of a man who is due to be married to the perfect wife when he falls in love with the perfect woman...
 
The development process has included a reading for John Caird, a workshop at the Bridewell Theatre in London, and a reading at the Actors Centre in London through Mercury Musical Developments' collaboration with ANMT.