Beth Morrison Projects and HERE Announce PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now Festival

Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) and HERE have announced the full line-up for the inaugural PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now festival, running January 9–18, 2013, in New York City. This two-week Festival, distilling the curatorial visions of artistic directors Kristin Marting (of HERE), Beth Morrison (of BMP), and Kim Whitener (of HERE), features visionary music-theatre and opera-theatre works by pioneering artists from NYC and around the world. PROTOTYPE is unique in providing a permanent theatrical home for the presentation of such quality productions, spotlighting the high-caliber creations of an exciting new generation of composers and collaborators, with a focus on chamber-sized works.

The Festival debuts with works from notable rising stars: a BMP and HERE co-production world premiere of Mohammed Fairouz's Sumeida's Song, the first opera by an Arab-American composer to be fully staged in America, directed by David Herskovits; the fully-produced New York City premiere of David T. Little's Soldier Songs, with libretto based on recorded interviews with veterans of five wars, directed by Yuval Sharon; the North American premiere of 33_^1/3 Collective's video opera Bluebeard, called "a masterpiece of video projection and computer animation" by the Financial Times; multimedia concerts performed by Los Angeles's "audacious" dark-glam opera band Timur and the Dime Museum; a workshop reading of Paolo Prestini's Aging Magician, in collaboration with stage director/designer Julian Crouch, with text and performance by Rinde Eckert. These Festival presentations, along with panels, coincide with the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) and International Society for the Performing Arts (ISPA) conferences.

A new body of work is beginning to explode in New York and on the national scene, and as this cohort of composers claims the opera-theatre and music-theatre genre in a new and unique way, PROTOTYPE will be integral in importing and exporting quality productions on an international platform. PROTOTYPE is unique in providing an curated selection of vibrant works in this vein that are ready to tour. These productions are sure to be enjoyed by uptown and downtown audiences, traditional opera and music-theatre lovers, and those who are new to the form.

Leadership funding for PROTOTYPE has been provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Festival calendar, credits, personnel, synopses, libretti, hi-resolution photos, videos, biographies, and tickets can be found at http://prototypefestival.org.