Pioneers Go East Collective Presents MARIA CELESTE, 5/16 - 5/25

Tickets $18 General, $14 student pricing - Please note Saturday 5/17 will be a gala performance with $50 tickets which includes an hour of additional performances and entertainment and food. Purchase in advance at incubatorarts.org. Performances 65min // Please note performances have an 8pm curtain, Sunday curtain at 5pm

Incubator Arts Project inside St. Mark's Church • 131 East 10th Street, at Second Avenue
L to First or Third Avenue; R, W to Broadway/8th Street; 6 to Astor Place; N, Q, 4, 5 to Union Square

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MARIA CELESTE (GALILEO) by Pioneers Go East Collective is a video and opera performance set in an interactive architectural environment inspired by Maria Celeste's life as a nun and her deep emotional attachment to her father, the scientist Galileo Galilei. With references to Dialogues, the famous text authored by Galileo and transcribed with the help of his daughter, MARIA CELESTE (GALILEO) contrasts the vast expansiveness of the Universe with the intimacy of cloistered life.

MARIA CELESTE (GALILEO) is conceived/designed by Gian Marco Lo Forte in collaboration with Daniel Nelson, Abby Felder and Pioneers Go East Collective, and integrates an original libretto performed in English and Italian, with music by Chad Raines. Through its intimate and interactive cloistered setting, with surreal projected images juxtaposed with live action performed to a soprano's narration and live emotional score/ soundscape, MARIA CELESTE (GALILEO) will bring an immediacy that challenges the conventions of opera and spectatorship. The performers, images, and space will all be treated as possessing inherent meaning and in a state of potential, waiting to manifest.

In creating MARIA CELESTE (GALILEO) the artists' collective Pioneers Go East will continue to build on an ongoing collaborative generative process that re-­?articulates opera, the first truly multimedia art form, as an immediate, interactive and viewer-­?centered experience.

MARIA CELESTE (GALILEO) includes live vocal/sound processing by composer Chad Raines. Audiences admitted to each performance will be limited to establish the direct relationship and as a way to mirror and amplify the psychological and surreal environment.

Gian Marco Lo Forte: libretto, direction and production design Chad Raines: composer and musical director
Abby Felder: dramaturge & design
Marie Yokoyama: lighting design

Silvia Forni: videography
Rocco D'Santi and Kathryn Lieber: video design Chad Chenail: associate director
Monica Lerch: assistant director
Nozomi Kawaguchi: assistant musical director
This project was originally workshopped in the fall of 2013 at La MaMa in collaboration with Daniel Nelson
Performers (lead):
Ashley Winland (Maria Celeste Galilei), Seth Gilman (Galileo/ singer), Daniel Nelson (Galileo/ video excerpts), Gina DeMay (Arcangela Galilei), Nozomi Kawaguchi (abbess).

Chorus:

Julia Dobner-­Pereira, Julie Regula, Maggie Robinson, Michaela Reggio, Marta Fuerst. More information on the company available at www.pioneersgoeast.org