PROTOTYPE – OPERA/THEATRE/NOW Festival

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    When:
    January 8, 2015 – January 17, 2015 all-day
    Categories:
    Cultural Event Music / Concert Event The Arts Event
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    Art Event Music Event Non Profit Event Performing Arts Event Theater Event

    PROTOTYPE – OPERA/THEATRE/NOW 

    January 8–17, 2015

    BETH MORRISION PROJECTS AND HERE ANNOUNCE PROTOTYPE 2015: OPERA/THEATRE/NOW

    Prototype FestivalFeaturing

    THE SCARLET IBIS (WORLD PREMIERE)

    SUNKEN CATHEDRAL (WORLD PREMIERE)

    TOXIC PSALMS (NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE)

    KANSAS CITY CHOIR BOY (PREMIERE PRESENTATION)

    WINTER’S CHILD (WORK IN PROGRESS)

    AGING MAGICIAN (WORK IN PROGRESS)

    TIMUR AND THE DIME MUSEUM (ONE NIGHT ONLY)

    By

    Stefan Weisman/David Cote • Bora Yoon • Karmina Silec & Others • Todd Almond • Ellen Reid/Amanda Jane Shank • Paola Prestini/Rinde Eckert/Julian Crouch

    “A wildly promising new opera and music-theatre festival…shows the dramatic potential of black box opera.” – The New York Times

    “A fertile breeding ground for interesting new work.” – The Washington Post

    “Kristin Marting, Beth Morrison, and Kim Whitener…found the crevices in New York’s underground opera life and filled them with inventive shows and intrepid audiences.” – New York magazine

    Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) and HERE are pleased to announce programming for the third annual PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now festival, running January 7–17, 2015, in New York City. This two-week festival, founded and curated by Kristin Marting (of HERE), Beth Morrison (of BMP), and Kim Whitener (of HERE), has quickly become an established force on the global opera scene. The second season, even more  overwhelmingly successful  than the first, left Alex Ross of the New Yorker to declare, “in an eleven-day period Prototype managed to uncover more new work of substance than City Opera was able to do in the past decade or more.”

    “A fertile breeding ground for interesting new work” (The Washington Post), the Festival features several presentations from noteworthy voices in 2015: two world premieres – composer Stefan Weisman and librettist David Cote’s The Scarlet Ibis, a contemporary family opera that weaves puppetry into its story-telling, and Korean-American artist Bora Yoon’s multimedia music-theatre work, Sunken Cathedral, which takes the audience on a surreal sonic journey of deep psychological impact. The festival also includes Toxic Psalms, an international co-presentation with Slovenian vocal theatre company Carmina Slovenica and St. Ann’s Warehouse; Kansas City Choir Boy, a theatricalized concept album by Todd Almond, at HERE; two work-in-progress presentations of Beth Morrison Projects operas in development: Winter’s Child, by Ellen Reid and Amanda Jane Shank, co-presented with Trinity Wall Street; and Aging Magician, by Paola Prestini, Rinde Eckert, and Julian Crouch, a returning work-in-progress from the inaugural Festival, here copresented with Park Avenue Armory and Opera America’s New Works Forum; and a onenight only performance, in collaboration with Joe’s Pub, of a smash hit from the inaugural Festival, Timur and the Dime Museum, a Los Angeles-based “dark glam” opera band.

    These Festival presentations take place at HERE, St. Ann’s Warehouse, La MaMa, Park Avenue Armory, Trinity Church’s St. Paul’s Chapel, and Joe’s Pub, along with forums to coincide with the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) and International Society for the Performing Arts (ISPA) conferences, and the Opera America New Works Forum.