Pioneers Go East Collective's MARIA CELESTE (GALILEO) to Run 5/16-25 at Incubator Arts Project

Pioneers Go East Collective's Maria Celeste (Galileo) will run May 16 - 25, 2014 at Incubator Arts Project.

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 cloistered nun and her deep emotional attachment to her father, the scientist Galileo Galilei.

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 aims to re-articulate opera, the first truly multimedia art form, as an immediate, interactive and viewer-centered experience.

MARIA CELESTE (GALILEO) includes 10 performers including a soprano and 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 Forno: 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), Kat Yew (abbess). Chorus: Julia Dobner-Pereira, Julie Regula, Maggie Robinson, Michaela Reggio, Nozomi Kawaguchi, Marta Fuerst. More information on the company available at www.pioneersgoeast.org.

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 , or call TheaterMania at 212-352-3101. Performances 65min. Please note all performances have an 8pm curtain. The Incubator Arts Project inside St. Mark's Church is located at 131 East 10th Street, at Second Avenue. Directions: L to First or Third Avenue; R, W to Broadway/8th Street; 6 to Astor Place; N, Q, 4, 5 to Union Square.

Pioneers Go East Collective (PGEC) is a community of international performing and visual artists led by Gian Marco Lo Forte dedicated to the creation of intimate and visceral live performance installations borne of a collaborative rehearsal process that redefine opera and other performance genres through original narratives that incorporate intricate soundscapes and surreal visuals, coupled with poetry, choreography, design, and live and recorded video.

Pioneers Go East Collective work elevates aesthetics in order to examine how the interplay of mediums inform each other, drawing viewers into dialogue with the notion of performance, observation vs experience, opera and various forms of media.

Gian Marco Lo Forte (librettist, director & designer) is originally from Italy and a NYC based librettist, director and designer of multimedia live music installations. Gian Marco is an artist-in-residence at La MaMa where he founded Pioneers Go East Collective, which has developed hybrid transmedia projects with music and poetry. His design work presented in NYC: Galapagos; HERE; WET; Abingdon; New York Theater Workshop; Art on Air; and he designed for Pan Asian Rep; Magis Co; Watson Arts; Operating Theatre; Slant; May Adrales; Ernest Abuba; Kim Ima; Ellen Stewart. Gian Marco is in residence with Great Jones Rep and has designed at Biennale di Venezia and toured in Europe. Awards: LMCC ('11 & '12 & '13 & '14); The Puffin Foundation ('12 & '14); Lower Manhattan Council for the Arts/ Process Space Residency '14; Nancy Quinn Fund/ ART New York ('14); Chashama Residency ('12); Opera America -Alfred L. Tobin ('10). MFA NYU ('09).

ABOUT THE INCUBATOR ARTS PROJECT: By offering a series of production programs that provide space, labor, technical assistance and administrative expertise, Incubator Arts Project supports the presentation of world premiere, contemporary work in the performing arts made by dance, music and theatreartists. Incubator Arts Project has been featured in American Theatre magazine, The New York Times, TIME OUT New York, The Village Voice, and The Brooklyn Rail and won a 2010 Obie grant. For more information, visit www.incubatorarts.org.