Guerilla Opera Announces 10th Season - World Premieres, Live Streams and More!

Guerilla Opera is all fun and games in their 10th anniversary season, featuring a new production of Loose, Wet, Perforated with music and libretto by Nicholas P. Vines in September 2016 and the world premiere of Play, the Game or Game, the Play with music and libretto by composer and theater artist Rick Burkhardt in May 2017.

American Idol meets The Hunger Games meets The Price is Right in Guerilla's season opener, Loose, Wet, Perforated by Nicholas P. Vines. The opera was first commissioned and premiered by the group in September of 2011 and now in this new production, stage director Austin Regan leads the Guerilla team through a game show set in a parallel future. Inspired by medieval morality plays, this opera is the tale of "Loose" and "Wet," who undergo various trials to climb rank in their secret Guild. Live video feed intensifies each trial and you, the "live T.V. audience," are invited to participate at crucial moments. Which character will descend to isolation and despair and which to fame and fortune?

Loose, Wet, Perforated is approximately 75 minutes in duration, sung in English, and scored for soprano, mezzo-soprano, countertenor and baritone, clarinet, saxophone, trombone, and percussion. This production has adult content and is not suitable for children under the age of 14.

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This production is made possible through the generosity of Timothy and Jane Gillette, The Amphion Foundation and the Boston Conservatory at Berklee Ensemble-in-Residence program.

For more information visit Guerilla Opera online at www.guerillaopera.com, like them on Facebook at facebook.com/guerillaopera, and follow @guerillaopera on Twitter and Instagram using #LooseWetPerforated.

LIVE PERFORMANCES (Wednesday-Saturday, September 21-24, 2016, 8 p.m.)
Loose, Wet, Perforated plays for four performances: Wednesday through Saturday, September 21-24, 2016, at 8 p.m. An audience talk-back will directly follow the performance on Thursday, September 22, 2016. All performances are in The Zack Box Theater at Boston Conservatory at Berklee at 8 The Fenway, Boston, MA. Tickets for Loose, Wet, Perforated become available Wednesday, September 9 at 12 p.m. and are $15 for general admission and $10 for senior citizens. All tickets are subject to a fee. Tickets are free for students ($10 advance purchase), as available the day of with a valid ID. Free student tickets must be claimed at the door via student rush. For ticket purchases, visit bostonconservatory.berklee.edu/events/ticketing or call the Boston Conservatory at Berklee Box Office at (617) 912-9222 (Wed-Fri,12-5 p.m.).

CAST, ENSEMBLE & CREATIVE TEAM
Loose, Wet, Perforated features the following cast of veteran Guerilla performers: soprano Aliana de la Guardia (General Manager) as Loose, and baritone Brian Church as Wet, countertenor Douglas Dodson as Perforated and mezzo-soprano Thea Lobo as Various. The instrumental ensemble features clarinetist Amy Advocat, saxophonist Philipp Stäudlin, trombonist Chris Moore (debut), and percussionist Mike Williams (Co-Artistic Director). Guerilla Opera's creative team features: stage director Austin Regan (debut), resident production designer Julia Noulin-Mérat (Director of Design and Production), lighting designer Keithlyn Parkman (debut) and resident costume designer Neil Fortin.

SPECIAL EVENTS

Live-Streamed Closing Night Performance (Saturday, September 24, 2016, 8 p.m. EST)
Guerilla Opera will live stream the world premiere performance of Loose, Wet, Perforated by Nicholas P. Vines on Friday, September 24 at 8 p.m. EST from The Zack Box Theater at Boston Conservatory at Berklee, courtesy of Ball in Square Films and Silken Audio. The live stream can be viewed athttps://livestream.com/guerillaopera/LWP2016, and is free of charge to watch.

Talk-Back with the Creative Team (Thursday, September 22, 2016)
Join in a conversation with the composer, director, cast and creative team from Loose, Wet, Perforateddirectly following the performance on Thursday, September 22, 2016. Talk-backs are included with ticket purchases and are held in The Zack Box Theater at Boston Conservatory at Berklee

Loose, wet, perforated studio recording and commercial release
On October 1st and 2nd Guerilla Opera will take up residence at the world-class Blue Jay Studios in Carlisle, MA to produce a studio recording of Loose, Wet, Perforated for commercial released on Navona Records, a classical label imprint of audio production house PARMA Recordings. A specific release date has not been set but Guerilla is anticipating summer of 2017.

ADDITIONAL 2015-2016 SEASON PRODUCTIONS AND EVENTS

Game, the Play or Play, the Game by Rick Burkhardt (May 2017)
This world premiere opera by composer and theater artist Rick Burkhardt with stage direction by Metropolitan Opera director Sarah Meyers promises to be one of Guerilla Opera's most avant-garde experiences. In present day four friends convene in a living room, chatting and sitting around a board game called BLACKOUT, which takes place during the blitz on London in 1940. Three of them have played the game before and the fourth learns the rules as they play. Each character in the American living room slowly starts to inhabit the British character they play in the game as time and space slowly begin to skew.

The opera is an investigation of game playing as a social activity which transforms the players and their relationships to one another. Four singer/actors paired with four instrumentalist/actors are depicted playing a board game in which the board literally folds out onto the stage with the audience in-the-round. The sound world develops from the actual sounds of the game (rolling dice, shuffling cards, moving small game pieces, etc.) and extends into those of the musical instruments (percussion, violin, saxophone, and clarinet).

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PRESS OPENING: FINAL DRESS REHEARSAL (Tuesday, September 20, 8 p.m.)
Guerilla Opera invites reviewers and all members of the press to attend their final dress rehearsal ofLoose, Wet, Perforated on Tuesday, September 20, 2016 at 8 p.m. in The Zack Box Theater at The Boston Conservatory in Boston, MA. Contact General Manager Aliana de la Guardia, directly atalidelaguardia@guerillaopera.com or call (201) 952-6735 (mobile) to secure your admission to this private event.

ABOUT GUERILLA OPERA
Guerilla Opera is a Boston-based experimental opera company whose mission is to commission new chamber operas written specifically for their ensemble of artists, and to perform in intimate theatrical settings without the use of a conductor or formal music director. Visit our website at guerillaopera.com for more information.

ABOUT "LOOSE, WET, PERFORATED" COMPOSER
The works of Nicholas Vines have been performed by such interpreters as Alarm Will Sound, BMOP, the BT Scottish Ensemble, and the Australian Voices. He has received commissions from numerous sources both in the US and abroad, such as: Faber Music, ChamberMade Opera, Callithumpian Consort, Firebird Ensemble, the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Recognition for Vines' work includes APRA/AMC Art Music, Green Room and Helpmann Awards (2011, 2007, and 2006), an Honorable Mention in the 2006 Salvatore Martirano Competition, and a semifinals position in the 2009 Opera Vista Competition. His works are published by Faber Music (London), the Australian Composers Online Project, Alexander Street Press, and the Australian Music Centre. A CD of his compositions, featuring The Butcher of Brisbane, Economy of Wax and Torrid Nature Scene, is currently in development with Callithumpian Consort. He is currently working on Mary Bligh, a full-scale opera commissioned by MLC School, Burwood (Sydney). Since graduating in 2007 with a PhD from Harvard University, Vines taught theory and composition there and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Over the last four years, he has run the composition program of New England Conservatory's Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice, and last summer, was a Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center. He was recently appointed Artistic Director of Music at Sydney Grammar School. (www.nicholasvines.com)

ABOUT "LOOSE, WET, PERFORATED" DIRECTOR
Austin Regan is a New York based theater director. Recent productions include the world premiere of Alexandra Silber's The Trojan Women (The Hangar Theatre); Mad Libs Live! a new interactive musical for young audiences Off-Broadway at New World Stages; YousaidShesaidHesaid, a new opera by Christopher Oscar Peña and Molly Joyce (Pioneer Works/Ferus Festival); The Blind (The Flea Theater); Red Riding Hood (The Hangar Theatre);Ghost in the Machine (Dragon's Egg); Peter Lerman's The Sacred Harp (Musical Theatre Factory); Spring Awakening (two productions, at The Boston Conservatory and at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at UIUC); #MormonInChief (Kraine Theater); Horse Play (Dixon Place); Floyd Collins; and The Who's Tommy. Regan has directed and developed new work at the Hangar Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, MTF 4x15, Julia Miles Theater, the Zipper Factory, #serials@theflea,the Metropolitan Room, the 92nd St. Y, the 52nd Street Project, New York University, The Boston Conservatory, and the United Nations. Regan was featured in the New York Times for his work as the associate of Tony Award winning director Michael Mayer, which includes Broadway (American Idiot, Everyday Rapture, On A Clear Day...) and the Metropolitan Opera (Rigoletto). Regan is a Drama League Directors Project Fellow, a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, a founding member of the Musical Theatre Factory, and a former Resident Director (2013-2015) at the Obie and Drama Desk Award-winning Flea Theater under artistic director Jim Simpson. He is the director of the web series This Is Not A Comedy, and the new sketch comedy web series Such Good Friends: A Tribute to Nichols and May.

Also active in theater education, Regan has directed at top college theater departments including The Boston Conservatory and the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. He has also served on the faculty of The Boston Conservatory and at Trollwood Performing Arts School, guest lectured at New York University, taught the Lab Company in the Hangar Theatre's summer program, and currently teaches in New York with Other Side of the Table, an organization he co-founded in 2010. (www.austinregan.nyc)

ABOUT "GAME, THE PLAY OR PLAY, THE GAME" COMPOSER
Rick Burkhardt studied music composition at Harvard University, the University of Illinois, and the University of California, San Diego, where he earned his Ph.D. in 2006. He has received commissions, grants, and performances from organizations and performers such as the U.S.-Mexico Fund for Culture, the La Jolla Symphony, Ensemble Surplus, the Boswil Foundation, János Négyesy and Päivikki Nykter, Ensemble Ascolta, Red Fish Blue Fish, the NOISE quartet, the past(modern) duo, sfSound, Toca Loca, Mark Menzies, the Olympia Chamber Orchestra, the American Composers Forum, and Ensemble Chronophonie. During the early 1990's, he toured the US, Germany, and Swtizerland performing new music and theater with the Performers' Workshop Ensemble. In 1997, he began studying music with Chaya Czernowin and took classes in poetry from Rae Armantrout. He spent the following years inventing idiosyncratic methods for producing critical interactions of oddly integrated music and text.

He is a founding member of the Nonsense Company, an experimental music / theater trio dedicated to new works and new venues. The Nonsense Company has performed in over 30 US cities, presenting new music and theater in unexpected combinations for a wide range of audiences. Their concert in Darmstadt in 2004 was hailed as "one of the most solid, free, and critical aesthetic propositions... of the festival." Their 2008 performance in NYC's Frigid Theater Festival was reviewed as "the must see show of the festival" and won Best Show and Audience Choice awards. Along with Alec Duffy, Dave Malloy, and Rachel Chavkin, he received an Obie Award for creating the play "Three Pianos" at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater in 2010. (www.rickburkhardt.com)

ABOUT "GAME, THE PLAY OR PLAY, THE GAME" DIRECTOR
Sarah Meyers is a stage director based in New York, where she is on the directing staff of the Metropolitan Opera. In November 2015, she made her debut with the Washington National Opera, directingHansel and Gretel in a production that DC Metro Arts declared a "scrumptious holiday treat." She has also directed at New York City Opera, San Francisco Opera, and Lithuania National Opera. Recent directorial credits include a new production of her own original adaptation of Die Fledermaus with Boston University's Tanglewood Institute, Dido and Aeneas at The Juilliard School, and revivals of La Traviata and Lucia di Lammermoor for the Metropolitan Opera.

Meyers has a passion for directing and developing contemporary opera. In 2014, she directed the world premiere of Ken Ueno'sGallo for Guerilla Opera. The production was hailed as "one of Guerilla Opera's best" and highly praised by The Boston Globe for its inventiveness and "striking tableaux." In 2013, Meyers directed a production of Britten's Noye's Fludde called "enchanting" by the NY Times. She also was the associate director to Julie Taymor for Elliot Goldenthal's Grendel at LA Opera and the Lincoln Center Festival in 2006.

Upcoming engagements include a revival of I Puritani at the Metropolitan Opera, and the world premiere of a new opera by Gregg Kallor, The Tell-Tale Heart. (www.sarahinameyers.com)

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