PROTOTYPE: Opera | Theatre | Now, Beth Morrison Projects and HERE's annual festival announces its ninth season, January 8-16 2021.
The season, curated by festival directors Jecca Barry, Kristin Marting, and Beth Morrison, has been completely re-envisioned following the COVID-19 crisis, responding to the seismic events of the present moment in a way that would be impossible under normal circumstances, when works are often created over the course of several years. The result is a series of multi-disciplinary, cross-platform events that expand the technological boundaries of opera-theatre and music-theatre, and offer a new vision for the audience experience.
The festival opens with three world premiere vocal theatre works: Modulation, a self-guided digital exploration of isolation, fear, and identity by 13 composers; Times3 (Times x Times x Times), an immersive sonic experience in Times Square by
Geoff Sobelle & Pamela Z; and Ocean Body, a multi-screen film and music installation at HERE by composer/vocalists
Helga Davis and Shara Nova and director-filmmaker
Mark DeChiazza. There will also be three digital U.S. premieres from abroad - Ben Frost & Petter Ekmann's The Murder of Halit Yozgat, Garin Nugroho and Septina Rosalina Layan's The Planet - A Lament, and Valgeir Sigurðsson's Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists - which explore themes of racial violence and institutional blindness, environmental disaster, and the unsettling nature of change. All festival offerings will be free, except for Modulation.
The Festival directors, in a joint statement, said: "The works our audiences are used to seeing in PROTOTYPE generally take 3-5 years to develop and produce. This year, as COVID necessitated that we put aside our originally planned festival, we recognized an opportunity. Warp-speed festival curation and artistic creation meant we could directly respond to our current time. To what has happened to our world in 2020. While we can't gather together in the dark of our beloved theatres, we can still take our audiences on a journey. A journey for this moment; one that has asked a group of artists to dream in different ways, collaborate in different ways, and create in different ways. The world is suffering in unimaginable ways right now. We believe that the best way for us to respond is to do what we do best - giving audiences a festival filled with astonishing work by breathtaking artists."
PROTOTYPE launches January 8, 2021, with the digital world premiere of Modulation, a groundbreaking exploration of how opera and theater can adapt to the digital format. The piece will allow audience members to choose their path through a series of musical and visual experiences that grapple with themes of isolation, identity, and fear. The digital and design experience is created in partnership with Imaginary Places, creators of the acclaimed digital quarantine response piece Decameron Row, and the thirteen individual works that make up the experience are composed by some of the most provocative and diverse voices in contemporary music: Jojo Abot, Sahba Aminikia, Juhi Bansal, Raven Chacon, Carmina Escobar, Yvette Jackson, Molly Joyce, Jimmy López, Angelica Negrón,
Paul Pinto,
Daniel Bernard Roumain, Joel Thompson, and Bora Yoon.
On January 9, PROTOTYPE will unveil Times3 (Times x Times x Times), a world premiere sonic journey through Times Square - past, present and imagined. Created by composer Pamela Z and theatre artist
Geoff Sobelle, this immersive sound experience weaves seamlessly in and out of the fabric of the city, exploring the history of the pulsing heart of New York City before it was silenced by the pandemic.
The multi-screen film and music installation Ocean Body will also premiere on January 9 at HERE. In-person by appointment audiences of eight people at a time will experience an audiovisual experience crafted by composer/vocalists
Helga Davis and Shara Nova, director-filmmaker
Mark DeChiazza, and visual artist Annica Cuppetelli. The emotionally-charged installation will combine four video screens with surround sound audio, growing from the longstanding musical and personal relationship between Davis and Nova.
In addition to the three world premiere experiences, PROTOTYPE will offer the U.S. digital premiere of three deeply-relevant works, each streamed for free on-demand on the PROTOTYPE website. The Murder of Halit Yozgat, composed by Ben Frost & Petter Ekmann with libretto by Daniela Danz, tells the story of 21-year-old Halit Yozgat, who was assassinated during broad daylight in 2006 in Kassel, Germany in his immigrant parents' café. Combining sound art, electronic music, and dark metal, this production directed by Ben Frost confronts the issues of racial violence, structural racism and institutional blindness. The Planet - A Lament, directed by Garin Nugroho and composed and performed by Septina Rosalina Layan, tells the story of a community devastated by a tsunami, blending song, dance, and ritual with cinematic visuals, to tell a story of creation and destruction set against the backdrop of environmental disaster. Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists, composed by Valgeir Sigurðsson with text by a. Rawlings, and directed by Sara Martí, creates a visceral, visually spectacular world around the cyclic metamorphosis and life cycle of butterflies and moths, bringing audiences into a cocoon where the borders between dreams and reality are blurred.
Tickets for Modulation will be on sale for $25, with the remaining shows offered for free in an effort to provide the highest possible level of access to art during these challenging times. Entrance for all shows must be reserved in advance, and can be secured beginning November 16 by visiting
prototypefestival.org.
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