2015-16 OBERON Series to Open with GHOST QUARTET

By: Aug. 18, 2015
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The American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) at Harvard University, under the leadership of Artistic Director Diane Paulus, presents the first offering of its 2015/16 OBERON Presents series - GHOST QUARTET, with Music, Lyrics, & Text by Dave Malloy, Developed & Arranged by Ghost Quartet, and Directed by Annie Tippe. Performances run September 9, 10, and 11 at 7:30PM, September 12 at 4PM and 7:30PM at OBERON, 2 Arrow Street, Cambridge.

GHOST QUARTET is a song cycle about love, death, and whiskey. A camera breaks and four friends drink in an interwoven tale spanning seven centuries, with a murderous sister, a treehouse astronomer, a bear, a subway, and the ghost of Thelonious Monk.

Dave Malloy (composer/writer, vocals, piano, keyboard, ukulele, percussion) is a composer/ writer/performer/sound designer, whose Obie Award-winning Three Pianos and Beowulf - A Thousand Years of Baggage have been produced at the A.R.T. He has written the music for ten musicals, including Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, an electropop opera based on Tolstoy's War & Peace, which is being restaged as part of the A.R.T.'s current season. Comet premiered at Ars Nova in the fall of 2012, before transferring Off-Broadway to Kazino, a Russian supper club built specially for the show; the show ran for over 300 performances and won the Richard Rodgers Award, an Obie, and 11 Lortel nominations. Other musicals include Preludes at Lincoln Center Theatre 3, Black Wizard/Blue Wizard, Beardo, Sandwich, and Clown Bible. He has won a Jonathan Larson Grant, an ASCAP New Horizons Award, and a NEA/TCG Grant for Theatre Designers, has been a Guest Professor in devised music theater at Princeton and Vassar Universities, and is the composer for Banana Bag & Bodice. Future projects include adaptations of Moby-Dick and Shakespeare's Henriad, commissioned by The Public and Berkeley Repertory Theater, and a piece on Taoism at ACT. He lives in Brooklyn.

Brittain Ashford (vocals, autoharp, keyboard, percussion) is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, performer and songwriter. She fronts the Brooklyn-based band Prairie Empire, co-created the BCAT & CTOWN Variety Show and can be found performing in the various basements and bars of New York. She was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award for her role as Sonya in the acclaimed Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812.

Gelsey Bell (vocals, Celtic harp, metallophone, accordion, percussion) is a singer, songwriter, and scholar. She is a core member of thingNY and Varispeed, and has worked with numerous artists in the creation of new work, including Robert Ashley, Jonathan Bepler, Matthew Barney, Yasuko Yokoshi, Kimberly Bartosik, Rachel Chavkin, Kate Soper, Rick Burkhardt, and John King, among others. Gelsey has a doctorate in Performance Studies from NYU, and is the Critical Acts co-editor for TDR/The Drama Review.

Brent Arnold (vocals, cello, guitar, dulcimer, erhu, percussion) is a cellist, vocalist, and composer. His albums of original cello music include Night, Exquisite (2013) and An Albatross And A Half (2010). He composed the cello music for Louis C.K.'s tv show Louie, and has worked with The Antlers, Reggie Watts, Kristin Hersh, Filastine, Eyvind Kang, DJ/Rupture, Modest Mouse, and Jherek Bischoff, among many others. Brent studied the cello with Walter Gray of the Kronos Quartet and jazz violinist Michael White.

Annie Tippe (Director) Directing credits include Washeteria (Soho Rep, "NYT Critics Pick"), Aaron/Marie (w. Rachel Chavkin, Under the Radar Incoming! Series; PRELUDE Festival; Ars Nova ANT Fest), I Heard Sex Noises (Ars Nova Project Residency), DEBUTANTE. (Bernie Wohl Center; ANT Fest), A Quiet Sip of Coffee (Wildside Festival, Montreal), The Fall of Hotel Mudafier (SWIFT), Dinosaur Play (HERE Arts), The Collected Rules of Gifted Camp (The Brick) and First Ladies Project (E. 4th Street Theater). She was last seen performing in I'm Miserable But Change Scares Me (New Saloon). She was the Associate Director for The TEAM's Mission Drift (dir. Rachel Chavkin) and Gabriel Kahane's The Ambassador (BAM; dir. John Tiffany). Williamstown Directing Corps. Annie is a 2015 Drama League Fall Directing Fellow.

Christopher Bowser (designer) is based in Brooklyn, NY. Recent directing: Pyre Cantata (HERE & Bushwick Starr); Harmony (Associate) at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles; Valhalla (Secret Theatre); Invisible Art, a site-specific piece in Williamsburg, BK. Design seen at HERE, The Bushwick Starr, The McKittrick Hotel, Ars Nova, Classic Stage Company, JACK etc. BFA: NYU Tisch at Playwrights Horizons Theater School.

Tickets from $25 can be obtained by calling the A.R.T. Box office at 617-547-8300 or online at americanrepertorytheater.org.



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