NEWS: PROTOTYPE FESTIVAL’s SMASHING 2019 LineUp

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SEPTEMBER 7, 2018

“The best news in opera in New York these days is the PROTOTYPE Festival…” – The Washington Post

“The festival is one of the great things about being in New York City in January.” – Opera News

PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now has announced full programming for the seventh annual festival of fresh opera-theatre & music-theatre, running January 5-13, 2019 and featuring ten presentations that “shift the whole paradigm of what opera is and can be” (New York Observer).

Founded by co-directors Kristin Marting (of HERE), Beth Morrison (of Beth Morrison Projects) and Kim Whitener (of HERE), and led by them along with co-director Jecca Barry (of Beth Morrison Projects), the PROTOTYPE Festival emphasizes the bold and prolific work coming from today’s creative talents across the spectrum of gender, age, sexual orientation, and ethnic background. Since its launch in 2013, PROTOTYPE has presented a phenomenal 39 new works in six seasons, propelling the industry forward as an industry disruptor and international influencer, while bringing to the fore the work of 26 female-identifying lead artists.

The 2019 Festival spotlights the imaginative and dramatic work of 31 lead artists, 16 of whom are women, exploring ideas of mental health, ethnicity, and motherhood, as well as concerns around the public justice system and immigration, via four world premieres, a U.S. premiere, two New York premieres, a one-night-only presentation, and two works-in-progress.

Ellen Reid's p r i s m is the culmination of a breakout year for the composer whose had major works performed at LA Chamber Orchestra (LACO), LA Philharmonic, and LA Master Chorale (a commission also featured in this year’s PROTOTYPE Festival) in just one year’s time. p r i s m receives its NY premiere as part of a rolling world premiere with LA Opera, here co-presented with La MaMa and featuring the Choir of Trinity Church Wall Street and NOVUS NY. With libretto by Roxie Perkins, p r i s m follows a daughter’s rise to consciousness via a perplexing relationship with her mother. p r i s m was commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects and developed by BMP in collaboration with Arizona State University, Lyric Theater@ University of Illinois, and PROTOTYPE, and is directed by James Darrah.

Just added to this year’s Festival is the U.S. premiere of Philip Venables' bombshell opera, 4.48 Psychosis, based on the final work of British playwright Sarah Kane. Hot off a sold-out Royal Opera House production in London, the piece explores the search for love and identity amid the turmoil and confusion of mental illness. Co-presented with Baruch Performing Arts Center.

Cellist/composer Leah Coloff’s ThisTree is a performed prose poem drawing together multiple media to form a deeply personal exploration of infertility and the end of a family tree, presented as a world premiere music-theatre production at HERE’s Mainstage.

Old Sound Room and The Windmill Factory’s The Infinite Hotel brings together writer and director Michael Joseph McQuilken with music and lyrics by Firehorse & The Few Moments and select songs adapted from material written by Amanda Palmer & Jason Webley for this world premiere music-theatre production. A cathartic live experience inside a movie-making machine, each performance results in a unique film featuring the audience as extras. Co-presented with Irondale.

Distinctive performer Joseph Keckler, known for his sharp wit and rich vocal range, takes audiences on a world premiere music-theatre late night “train ride” through cities around the world in Train With No Midnight, at HERE’s Dorothy B. Williams Theatre, commissioned and developed by PROTOTYPE. Pancho Villa From A Safe Distance, co-presented with BRIC, plays with time and narrative in the New York premiere of a bilingual opera about the infamous bandit-turned-hero of the Mexican Revolution. A number of talents from both sides of the border band together to tell the tale, including composer Graham Reynolds, librettists Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol of Mexico City, and GRAMMY Award-winning guitarist Adrian Quesada.

The first of the two 2019 Festival works-in-progress comes from composer-librettist Frances Pollock and co-librettist Tia Price. Stinney: An American Execution is based on the horrific true story of the innocent young black child, George Junius Stinney Jr., who was convicted and executed in the mid 1940s for rapes he did not commit (co-presented with French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) and Harlem Stage). A panel conversation will take place at Harlem Stage on January 10. Also in progress is composer Andrea Clearfield and librettists Jean-Claude van Itallie and Lois Walden's Mila, Great Sorcerer, an exploration of the folk hero, singer, and spiritual teacher, Milarepa, directed by Kevin Newbury.

The Festival honors one of its own with the one night only memorial tribute to Matt Marks featuring his music-theatre work The Little Death: Vol. 1. Net proceeds will be donated to the Matt Marks Impact Fund of Alarm Will Sound. Co-presented with Roulette. 

PROTOTYPE partners once again with Trinity Church Wall Street to present of time and place, a premiere program featuring a choral commission each from leading composers Ellen Reid and David T. Little. Reid’s dreams of the new world with libretto by Sarah LaBrie, receives its East Coast premiere while David T. Little and Royce Vavrek's Am I Born receives its world premiere on the Festival in an SATB version

The third season of PROTOTYPE's Out of Bounds series, which brings free, site-specific work to New York's public spaces, is curated a second time by Raul Zbengheci. For 2019 the series is presented in partnership with Times Square Arts and features Caroline Shaw's joyous and playful Pulitzer Prize-winning (2013) work, Partita for 8 Voices, performed by Roomful of Teeth, the Grammy Award-winning vocal ensemble of which Shaw is a member. These amplified performances are free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations necessary.

A special PROTOTYPE opening soirée with enticing guests is planned for January 9 at City Vineyard.

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2019 FESTIVAL TICKETING, CALENDAR, PRESS MATERIALS

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SHOW-BY-SHOW LISTINGS 

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p r i s m

Composer Ellen Reid 
Librettist Roxie Perkins
Director James Darrah 
Music Director Julian Wachner

Rolling World Premiere/NY Premiere Opera-Theatre

January 5 – January 12 | $30-$75 | $25 with PROTO Pack | $70 with Premium PROTO Pack
@ La MaMa
Duration: 1 h, 40 m

Co-Produced with Trinity Church Wall Street, featuring the Choir of Trinity Wall Street and NOVUS NY
Co-Presented with La MaMa
Commissioned, developed, and produced by Beth Morrison Projects

Locked away in a sterile room, a sickly child Bibi and her doting mother Lumee are each other’s sole protectors from the unknown. When a mysterious illness lurking outside their door leaves Bibi unable to walk, her youthful curiosity begins to simmer and a seductive external existence can no longer be ignored. Written by Ellen Reid and Roxie Perkins, p r i s m is a haunting, kaleidoscopic new work of opera-theatre that traverses the elasticity of memory after trauma. Composer Ellen Reid’s music erupts with color, using choral and orchestral manipulation to deliver an eerily distinct sonic world.

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4.48 Psychosis

Composed by Philip Venables
Based on the play by Sarah Kane
Directed by Ted Huffman
Conducted by William Cole
Featuring Contemporaneous

U.S. Premiere

January 5 – January 12 | $30-$75 | $25 with PROTO Pack | $70 with Premium PROTO Pack
@ Baruch Performing Arts Center
Duration: 1 h, 30 m

Produced in association with New Vision for Opera and Baruch Performing Arts Center
Co-Presented with Baruch Performing Arts Center  

Straight from the Royal Opera House’s sold-out production, PROTOTYPE presents the U.S. premiere of the contemporary opera that has the industry buzzing. Composed of 24 fragmented episodes, Sarah Kane's chilling final play details the experience of clinical depression and reveals an individual’s struggle to come to terms with their own psychosis. Philip Venables’ greatly acclaimed operatic adaptation, directed by Ted Huffman and conducted by William Cole, explores the search for love and happiness and the struggle for identity through a fusion of opera and spoken text. As an opera, 4.48 Psychosis brings a new resonance to the last creative utterances of one of the most courageous young British writers of her generation. 4.48 Psychosis is a production from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London. This production was first seen at the Lyric, Hammersmith on 24 May 2016.

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ThisTree

Written/Composed/Performed by Leah Coloff
Directed by Ellie Heyman 

World Premiere Music-Theatre

January 6 – January 12 | $30-$75 | $25 with PROTO Pack | $70 with Premium PROTO Pack
@ HERE Mainstage Theatre
Duration: 75 m

Produced by PROTOTYPE
Commissioned and developed by HERE through the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP)

Dappled late-afternoon light bathes a clearing in the hand crafted forest. Cellist/singer Leah Coloff emerges, trailing a 25-foot cape of tattered denim. Tracing the secrets of her family history, Coloff glides between idyllic childhood memories, unanswered questions and her roller coaster ride of fertility treatments. ThisTree weaves autobiographical storytelling, 8 mm home movies, and Coloff’s signature blend of blues, rock and non-traditional cello playing, supported by an all-female band, to investigate the vantage point of being the last branch on the family tree.

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The Infinite Hotel

Written & Directed by Michael Joseph McQuilken
Music & Lyrics by Firehorse & The Few Moments
Select songs adapted from material written by Amanda Palmer & Jason Webley for this production

World Premiere Music-Theatre

January 5 – January 12 | $30-$75 | $25 with PROTO Pack | $70 with Premium PROTO Pack
@ Irondale
Duration: 2 h

Co-Produced with Old Sound Room and The Windmill Factory
Co-Presented with Irondale

Rock music and Rube-Goldberg-cinematography collide in a cathartic and inventive music-theatre experience. The Infinite Hotel invites live audiences to become ‘extras’ and step inside an elaborate movie-making machine, producing a one-take feature film together every night. Refreshingly honest, the film’s narrative follows five strangers unknowingly writing music together across space and time, and questions the nature of human interrelatedness, our appetite for visibility, and the creative ideas we accidentally share.  

Featuring music and lyrics by Leah Siegel (Leisure Cruise/Firehorse) & The Few Moments; and select songs adapted from material written by Amanda Palmer (Dresden Dolls) & Jason Webley for this production; rock concert moments by The Windmill Factory (NIN, Metric, Phantogram); and a powerhouse cast.

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Pancho Villa From A Safe Distance

Composer Graham Reynolds 
Librettist Lagartijas Tiradas Al Sol
Director Shawn Sides

NY Premiere Multimedia Opera

January 5 – January 8 | $30-$75 | $25 with PROTO Pack | $70 with Premium PROTO Pack
@ BRIC House
Duration: 75 m

Co-Presented with BRIC

Pancho Villa From A Safe Distance is a bilingual cross-border opera about the enigmatic general, legendary bandit, and hero of the Mexican Revolution. Through a non-linear collage of scenes from or inspired by the life of the complex, contradictory, and controversial leader, the piece provides a timely lens into the relationships and overlaps between the communities of Mexico, the United States, and the borderlands. Originally commissioned by Ballroom Marfa and co-commissioned by Fusebox Festival, this Creative Capital Award-winning project brings together an impressive array of artistic collaborators from both sides of the Rio Grande: Austin, TX-based composer Graham Reynolds, librettists Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol of Mexico City, director Shawn Sides of Rude Mechs, and an exceptional ensemble of two vocalists and six instrumentalists built around Grammy-winning producer-guitarist Adrian Quesada.

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Train With No Midnight

Written/Composed/Performed by Joseph Keckler 

World Premiere Music-Theatre

January 5 – January 13 | $30-$45 | $25 with PROTO Pack
@ HERE Dorothy B. Williams Theatre
Duration: 75 m

Commissioned, developed, and produced by PROTOTYPE
Co-Commissioned with Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College

Distinctive singer-songwriter Joseph Keckler and an intimate musical ensemble lead the audience through a series of vignettes, each like a stop on a late night train -- from Paris to Hamburg, Michigan to Times Square and the symbolic space of The Crossroads, a place of danger and possibility. The text "dances between comedy, commentary and communion," while the score features smoky pop songs, propulsive invocations, and leaps into the operatic realm.

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Stinney: An American Execution

Composer Frances Pollock
Librettists Tia Price & Frances Pollock 
Co-Directors Emma Weinstein & Jeremy O. Harris
Music Director Alexander Lloyd Blake

Work-in-Progress Opera

January 12 – January 13 | $30 | $25 with PROTO Pack
@ French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF)
Duration: 2 h

Co-Presented with French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) and Harlem Stage

An involuntary symbol of sickening injustice, George Junius Stinney Jr. was executed at the age of 14. Having been wrongly accused and convicted of the brutal rape and murder of two white girls in Alcolu, SC, in 1944, George became the youngest person legally executed in 20th century America. Stinney tells the story of George, his family, his divided hometown, and the action and inaction that led an innocent black child to the electric chair. A new opera with roots in gospel, blues, baptist hymn, Appalachian folk music and electronic techniques, Stinney spotlights the anger and agony of the entire populous of Alcolu, connecting the dots to our own socio-political climate in 2019 and the pervasive "fear of the other."

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Mila, Great Sorcerer

Composed by Andrea Clearfield
Libretto by Jean-Claude van Itallie & Lois Walden
Directed by Kevin Newbury

Work-in-Progress Opera

January 12 and 13 | $30
@ Gerald Lynch Theatre at John Jay
Duration: 2 h

Produced by New Vision for Opera

Folk hero, singer, and spiritual teacher, Milarepa has been venerated for one thousand years. But as a child, directed by his mother, he wields black magic against the aunt and uncle that stole his inheritance, and destroys his entire village. His remorse sends him on a life journey from mass murder to enlightenment. Set to lush orchestration melding Eastern and Western sounds, his transformation and redemption into the most revered teacher of Tibetan Buddhism offer hope and spiritual wayfinding to all who regret acts of consequence and seek higher ground.

Commissioned by New Vision for Opera

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The Little Death: Vol. 1

Composer & Librettist Matt Marks
Starring Mellissa Hughes & Ted Hearne
One night only memorial Music-Theatre tribute to Matt Marks

January 8 | $25
@ Roulette
Duration: 1 h

Co-Presented by PROTOTYPE and Roulette
Net proceeds will be donated to the Matt Marks Impact Fund of Alarm Will Sound

In May 2018 the contemporary music community of New York City lost one of its shining stars and most beloved members, composer Matt Marks. In 2017, PROTOTYPE premiered Matt’s opera (with librettist and director Paul Peers), Mata Hari, to great success. As we all wrestle with this seismic loss, PROTOTYPE pays tribute to Matt by showcasing his first music-theatre composition, The Little Death: Vol. 1, in which he originated the male lead. The Little Death: Vol. 1 fuses bombastic electro-pop hooks, frenetically chopped break beats, hypnotic lyrics, and apocalyptic Christian imagery.

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of time and place

Conducted by Julian Wachner
Featuring The Choir of Trinity Wall Street and NOVUS NY

Premiere Program

January 8 | $30
@ St. Paul's Chapel
Duration: 80 m

dreams of the new world

Composed by Ellen Reid
Libretto by Sarah LaBrie
Lead Researcher Sayd Randle

Am I Born

Composed by David T. Little
Libretto by Royce Vavrek

Trinity premieres a program featuring a commission each from leading composers Ellen Reid and David T. Little, exploring within the vernacular of specific times and places what has been lost for the sake of progress. Ellen Reid’s dreams of the new world (libretto by Sarah LaBrie), originally premiered in Los Angeles and here presented in its East Coast premiere, portrays little-known, interview-based stories about the pursuit of the American dream in Memphis (1890), Houston (1s970), and Los Angeles (2018). Am I Born by David Little with libretto by Royce Vavrek, which premiered in Brooklyn in 2012 and receives its world premiere on the Festival in an SATB version, explores lost histories, altered places, and the spiritual bleed at the intersection of modernity and antiquity. Works are performed by The Choir of Trinity Wall Street and NOVUS NY with Julian Wachner conducting.

dreams of the new world is co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Master Chorale and The Choir of Trinity Wall Street.

Am I Born will be the world premiere of the Trinity commissioned SATB version of the work. Presented by PROTOTYPE in association with Trinity Church Wall Street.

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Partita for 8 Voices

Composed by Caroline Shaw
Featuring Roomful of Teeth

PROTOTYPE: Out of Bounds

January 7 | FREE
4pm and 7pm
@ Times Square, Broadway Plaza, between 43rd and 44th Streets
Duration: 25 m

Presented as part of PROTOTYPE: Out of Bounds in partnership with Times Square Arts

PROTOTYPE's Out of Bounds series, which brings free, site-specific work to public spaces is curated in its third season by Raul Zbengheci. The featured presentation is Caroline Shaw's joyous and playful Pulitzer Prize-winning (2013) work, Partita for 8 Voices, performed by Roomful of Teeth, the Grammy Award-winning vocal ensemble of which Shaw is a member. For this first-ever presentation of the piece staged and choreographed in a public space, PROTOTYPE partners with Times Square Arts. There will be two amplified performances free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations necessary.

Partita for 8 Voices is a 25-minute piece divided into four movements—Allemande, Sarabande, Courante, and Passacaglia—and draws stylistically from square dance calls, the American folk hymn, "Shining Shore," and the guided wall drawings of artist Sol LeWitt, “uniquely embracing speech, whispers, sighs, murmurs, wordless melodies and novel vocal effects” (Pulitzer Committee).

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PROTOTYPE: OPERA/THEATRE/NOW

“...the Prototype Festival is deeply committed to artists, giving composers, librettists, designers, performers, choreographers, conductors and directors support, developmental workshops and productions of their work.” – Stage Buddy

PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now launched in January 2013, unleashing a powerful wave of opera- and music-theatre from a new generation of composers and librettists. Across its first six seasons, PROTOTYPE produced and presented a total of 200 performances of 39 presentations, and shared the work of more than 600 local, national, and international artists. Now in its seventh season, PROTOTYPE, as Opera News proclaimed, “has become a major leader in opera theatre for the twenty-first century."

Founded by Kristin Marting (of HERE), Beth Morrison (of Beth Morrison Projects), and Kim Whitener (of HERE), and now produced and led by them along with new co-director Jecca Barry (of Beth Morrison Projects), PROTOTYPE supports and spotlights a diverse range of culturally and socially engaged work from intrepid creators across ethnicity and gender. Half of PROTOTYPE’s lead artists to date have been women, and the Festival has presented work from Armenian-American, Belgian, Chinese, Dutch, Egyptian-American, Indian-American, Iranian-American, Irish, Kazakh, Korean-American, Lithuanian, Mexican, Russian, Slovenian, Swedish and Ukrainian lead artists.


PRODUCER-DIRECTORS

Since 2006, Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) has been a tastemaker at the forefront of musical and theatrical innovation by supporting living composers and their collaborators during the creation of groundbreaking new works in opera, opera-theatre, and vocal-theatre. BMP encourages risk-taking in all its artists, resulting in provocative works that represent a dynamic and lasting legacy for a new American canon. BMP has increased the number of productions per season and has, during the last five years alone, produced works in 43 venues in 22 cities around the world. BMP’s commitment to cutting edge musical expression has created “its own genre" (Opera News) of originality. In 2013, Beth Morrison Projects and HERE Arts Center co-founded the PROTOTYPE Festival, which showcases contemporary opera-theatre and music-theatre projects over ten days each January. The New Yorker recently wrote that the festival is “Essential to the evolution of American Opera,” and the New York Times called the festival “Bracingly innovative… a point of reference.” The 2014 bi-coastal expansion to Los Angeles sprang from growing partnerships with institutions such as LA Opera, the LA Phil, Ford Theatres, and RVCC. BMP is a National Sawdust Artist in Residence. www.bethmorrisonprojects.org.

Beth Morrison Projects is led by Creative Producer Beth Morrison, an opera and theatre producer, singer, and voice teacher with bachelor and master of music degrees and a master of fine arts in theatre management/producing from the Yale School of Drama, as well as many years of experience in the development of new opera and theatre works. She first cultivated her extensive experience in arts administration at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute where she served as administrative director for four years. Beth served a founding tenure as the Producer for the Yale Institute for Music Theatre from 2009-2011, as well as Producer for New York City Opera's VOX: Contemporary American Opera Lab from 2010-2011. Beth is an in-demand speaker at national and international industry conferences, a frequent judge for international opera and music-theatre festivals and competitions, and a guest lecturer at conservatories and universities around the country. Beth Morrison Projects is the realization of Beth's vision, which stems from a deep commitment to nurturing composers and other artists and fostering the development of new opera and other new music-theatre works. BMP has established itself as a composers' producer and The New York Times said, "The production of new [opera] works in the city still falls mostly to the tireless Beth Morrison and her Beth Morrison Projects."

Jecca Barry joined Beth Morrison Projects as General Manager in February 2013 and has served as Executive Director since 2017. In addition, she was recently named a Co-Director of the PROTOTYPE Festival. Jecca began her career as a performer of avant-garde flute music, before transitioning into finance and arts administration. Prior to joining BMP, she was a Business Manager at Spielman Koenigsberg & Parker where she handled the daily financial needs of high net worth clients, and Financial Administrator for the women’s rights non-profits Huairou Commission/ GROOTS International. Jecca worked with several arts organizations while living in Paris, France (2002-03, 2006-08), including touring multidisciplinary performance works to London, Amsterdam, and New York. Jecca has served as producer for the physical-theatre work The Object Lesson since 2014, touring it domestically and internationally to venues in Edinburgh, New York, Los Angeles, and Australia among others, and developed the work HOME, by artist Geoff Sobelle, which premiered in 2017. Jecca received a B.A.(Mus) in Flute Performance from the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England, and an M.M. in Flute Performance from New York University.

Since 1993, HERE has been one of New York’s most prolific producing and presenting organizations, and today stands at the forefront of the city’s presenters of new hybrid art. HERE supports multidisciplinary work that does not fit into a conventional programming agenda. HERE's aesthetic represents the independent, the innovative, and the experimental. HERE has developed such acclaimed works as Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues; Basil Twist’s Symphonie Fantastique; Young Jean Lee's Songs of The Dragons Flying To Heaven; Trey Lyford & Geoff Sobelle’s all wear bowlers; and Taylor Mac's The Lily's Revenge. As the ultimate in hybrid forms, music-theatre and opera-theatre premieres developed and produced at HERE include Kamala Sankaram's first opera Miranda, Yoav Gal's Mosheh, Christina Campanella and Stephanie Fleischman's Red Fly/Blue Bottle, Nick Brooke's Border Towns, and Paul Pinto’s Thomas Paine in Violence. HERE has garnered 16 OBIE awards, 2 OBIE grants for artistic achievement, the 2015 Ellen Stewart Award from New York Innovative Theatre Awards, a 2006 Edwin Booth Award (“for Outstanding Contribution to NY Theatre”) from the CUNY Graduate Center, five Drama Desk nominations, two Berrilla Kerr Awards, four NY Innovative Theatre Awards and a Pulitzer Prize nomination. The New York Times has called HERE “one of the most unusual arts spaces in New York and possibly the model for the cutting-edge arts spaces of tomorrow.” www.here.org.

Kristin Marting is HERE’s Founding Artistic Director and a director of hybrid work based in NYC. As Artistic Director of HERE, she cultivates artists and programs all events for two performance spaces for an annual audience of 30,000. She co-created and co-curates HARP, HERE's Artist Residency Program. She has constructed 29 works for the stage (9 original hybrid works, 6 opera-theatre and music-theatre works, 9 adaptations of novels & short stories and 5 classic plays) and most recently premiered Assembled Identity at HERE and Silent Voices in BAM's Opera House with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus (featured in Prototype 2017). Other recent projects include IDIOT with Robert Lyons; Bombay Rickey, an opera cabaret on Yma Sumac in Prototype 2016; Trade Practices, an immersive theatrical experience on value, Lush Valley, an immersive work on citizenship and civic responsibility, and James Scruggs’s solo eight channel video work Disposable Men. She also directed Sounding and Dead Tech (collaborative works adapted from Ibsen), both of which received prestigious MAP Fund awards. She was recently named a NYTheatre.com Person of the Decade for outstanding contribution, a Leader to Watch by Art Table and honored with a BAX10 Award.

Kim Whitener is HERE’s Executive Director, co-curating and co-producing all of HERE's activities. Since early 2007 under her leadership, HERE's programming has grown exponentially, and several major initiatives have launched, including the PROTOTYPE festival and MADE HERE, an online video documentary series about New York performing artists. Ms. Whitener is also an independent creative producer with her own company, KiWi Productions, and over the years has worked with a diverse range of US artists, both companies and individuals, in the contemporary theatre, opera- and music-theatre, dance-theatre, and multi-media worlds to develop and produce new projects, working with co-producers worldwide. Her clients have included The Builders Association, Martha Clarke, Big Dance Theater, and 33 Fainting Spells, among others. Ms. Whitener was consulting producer on Logic of the Birds, artist Shirin Neshat's live performance featuring singer Sussan Deyhim (Lincoln Center Festival, Walker Art Center, Artangel London) in 2001. She also was co-producer of Zero Church, a multi-artist concert/performance event by Suzzy and Maggie Roche, at St. Ann's Warehouse in April 2002. Previously she was Managing Director of the ensemble theater company The Wooster Group, and worked with both the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia and the Boston Music Theatre Project at Suffolk University in Boston.

C R E D I T S

PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now receives leadership funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with other generous support from The Amphion Foundation, The Association of Performing Arts Presenters Cultural Exchange Program, The Augustine Foundation, BMI Foundation, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc., Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, Jean and Louis Dreyfus Foundation, Fresh Sound Foundation, Ann & Gordon Getty Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, OPERA America: Innovation Grants, OPERA America: New Works Exploration Grants, The Reed Foundation, The Ted Snowdon Foundation, Trust for Mutual Understanding, and the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation. Additional support is provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. PROTOTYPE receives generous corporate support from Meyer Sound.

JANARTS NYC

Every January in New York City, more than 45,000 performing arts leaders, artists, and enthusiasts from across the globe converge for JanArtsNYC (formerly, "January In NYC"). A partnership among eleven independent multidisciplinary festivals, indispensable industry convenings and international marketplaces, JanArtsNYC is one of the largest and most influential gatherings of its kind. Featuring more than 1,500 world-class showcases, concerts, and public performances, JanArtsNYC is the world’s most comprehensive platform for celebrating and experiencing the newest work by artists in theater, dance, opera, music, and performance. It is the destination for some of the world’s most influential performing arts conferences, providing essential opportunities for networking, learning, professional development, mentorship, cultural exchange, industry awards, and peer acknowledgement. JanArtsNYC hosts vibrant marketplaces where colleagues meet annually to transact deals, solidify partnerships and make face to face connections that drive their businesses forward.

Sarah Knight