Original Vision V: Menagerie at Overtone Industries

Overtone Industries

presents

Original Vision V: Menagerie

A performance of three new, innovative operas-in-development from emerging opera-makers

Performances: 

April 24 + 25, 2026, 8:00 pm - 9:15 pm

Highways Performance Space & Gallery

*reception with libations and cake following the performance on April 25

Public Sitzprobe:

April 19, 2026, 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm

First Congregational Church of Los Angeles

Los Angeles, CA — Join Overtone Industries for the fifth year of Original Vision, an incubator program dedicated to original stories of mythic proportion through the development and presentation of new and innovative opera-theater. Presented as part of OperaFest LA, Original Vision V: Menagerie features works in-development by Murphy Severtson and George Landau-Pincus, Samara Rice and Brian Sonia-Wallace, and O-Lan Jones, with mentorship from Jones and Fahad Siadat.

Original Vision provides development support to opera projects at the very beginnings of their creative journeys, through a workshop period that includes mentorship, feedback, and guidance from directors O-Lan Jones and Fahad Siadat. The program culminates in a fully staged production of an essential excerpt from each piece with costume, lighting, and scenic design. The program and performances provide composers and librettists with a strong foundation for the project and professional work samples to propel the future development of their operas. Original Vision was invented to create space and freedom for original stories of mythic proportion in the opera-development landscape, providing crucial support to early/mid-career composers and librettists. Original Vision alums have gone on to receive ongoing developmental and production support from OPERA America, American Opera Projects, Chicago Opera Theater, Atlanta Opera, West Edge Opera, Synchromy, and more. 

Asked about the genesis of this project, Overtone Artistic Director O-Lan Jones said:

“Over the years Fahad and I have honed our abilities to enter the worlds being created by our composer/librettist teams and offer guidance that helps bring their specific visions to life, rather than pull them in an externally driven direction. We’re like dream doulahs helping their original visions to be born.” 

To celebrate the fifth year of Original Vision, “uncategorizable legend” O-Lan Jones — known for her genre-defying compositions and her scene-stealing turns in film and television (and recently named one of Tim Burton’s “luminaries” in his documentary Life in the Line) — will workshop an excerpt from her own opera, MINE, alongside the works of emerging composers and librettists. 

Music Director Fahad Siadat shared: “Collaboration is a primary value of Overtone Industries and a central aspect of the Original Vision program. This year I wanted to make that explicit by putting one of O-Lan’s current works-in-progress through the Original Vision development process alongside our other creative teams. 

This has created more of a lateral social environment in the workshops; even though the Overtone team is directing the shows, we are all artists in the trenches, experimenting and creating risk-taking work together.”

The performance presents the heartbeats of three new operas, each with their own approach to experimental opera, exploring storytelling through music in different, innovative ways:

CARCINIZE! 

Music by Murphy Severtson 

Libretto by George Landau-Pincus

Directed by O-Lan Jones 

In CARCINIZE!, a famous female pilot (maybe the one you’re thinking of—maybe not) crash lands on a desert island. While she adjusts to a new life outside of the prying eyes of the public, she must also contend with the mysterious desires and histories of the island’s skittering hivemind of crabs, who refuse to give her solitude. CARCINIZE! is a fantasia on crustacean themes, exploring the illusion of choice on the scale of macrohistory. While a crash is often an ending, here it is the beginning, as the crabs and the pilot become one and many.

TIME IS THE ENEMY

Music by Samara Rice

Libretto by Brian Sonia-Wallace

Co-Directed by O-Lan Jones & Livia Reiner

Everyone’s been conscripted into a battle they didn’t choose. Time is the Enemy begins in a hospital, where Rob is battling a terminal illness. His estranged wife Clara, an astrophysicist studying time paradoxes, creates a Time Machine with the goal, not of traveling through time, but of ending it. A fool’s errand ensues, a psychedelic journey (literally) against the clock that moves between tragedy and screwball surrealism to ask: if the battle is unwinnable, is it therefore meaningless? Or are lost causes the ones most worthy of our devotion?

MINE 

Music and libretto by O-Lan Jones 

Directed by Livia Reiner

MINE, a new piece of opera-theater by O-Lan Jones, celebrates the epic day-to-day thoughts and feelings of Imogene, teased out into music, speech, and movement, where old friends, lovers, enemies, worries, and passions take hold. It features Imogene as she lives through various aspects of her life with the help of four performers connected under mounds of netting, ready to appear as lovers, relations, intruders from the horrors of the world, the haranguing Chorus, or as part of a “water ballet” swimming through the froth of debris.

Performances

Friday, April 24th, 8pm

Saturday, April 25th, 8pm*

*A ticketed reception will follow the performance on April 25 featuring cakes and snacks from Joanie & Leigh’s Cakes, whose treats were famously featured in Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland among other film and TV credits. The reception will celebrate Original Vision: Menagerie and O-Lan Jones’ participation as one of the Luminaries in the documentary Tim Burton: Life In the Line. 

Highways Performance Space & Gallery

1651 18th St

Santa Monica, CA 90404

Tickets

General Admission (April 24th or 25th): $25

General Admission & Post-Performance Reception (April 25th): $40

Student: $20

LA Opera Fest Artist/Partner: $20

Tickets available at highwaysperformance.org/events/original-vision-v-menagerie-2026-04-24-20-00 

Public Sitzprobe

Sunday, April 19, 6pm

First Congregational Church of Los Angeles

540 S Commonwealth Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90020

Creative Team

Composers: Murphy Severtson (Carcinize!), Samara Rice (Time is the enemy), O-Lan Jones (MINE)

Librettists: George Landau-Pincus (Carcinize!), Brian Sonia-Wallace (Time is the enemy), O-Lan Jones (MINE)

Stage Directors: O-Lan Jones and Livia Reiner

Music Director: Fahad Siadat

Lighting Designer: W. Alejandro Melendez

Set Designer: Jan Munroe

Costume Designer: Danica Martino

Producer: Elliot Menard

Performers 

Kevin Darnell Allen

Nelle June Anderson

Liz Eldridge

Kion Heidari

Elliot Menard

O-Lan Jones

Brightwork Newmusic

About Overtone Industries: 

Overtone Industries is a genre-bending opera-theater company, founded by composer, actress and theater visionary O-Lan Jones, that develops and presents original stories in a collaborative environment and cultivates opportunities for artists with an authentic voice to develop new works.

Overtone Industries brings to life original works of mythic depth that celebrate the grandeur of the human experience. Company Founder and Artistic Director, O-Lan Jones, is a passionate collaborator working with industry leaders and newcomers alike, to develop and perform authentic stories that have never been told before.

About the Composers and Librettists:

George Landau-Pincus is a multidisciplinary artist and archivist based in Brooklyn. His art practice includes poetry, collage, comics, crafting, puppet design, music, and visual art. He is interested in the interplay of analog and digital mediums, treating “lowbrow” art as both inspiration and interlocutor, and work that engages seriously with archival primary sources. His most recent archival work explores ideas of archival and curatorial alienation, specifically in performing arts archives, diving into the Brechtian murkiness that separates a performance from its recorded memory.

Samara Rice is an award-winning contemporary classical composer, pianist, toy pianist, and educator known for her inventive, textural sound world. Her music has been performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Australia by leading ensembles and GRAMMY® Award–winning artists, and at numerous new music festivals. She creates immersive works that blend unconventional instruments, technology, and audience participation, and is co-founder of the SonicMvmtScapes GPS-triggered sound walk series. Samara mentors young musicians through community organizations and her private lesson studio. In addition to her creative work, she has held production roles with the Ojai Music Festival and the Grand Teton Music Festival, and served on the board of directors of the American Composers Forum–Los Angeles. When not composing, she enjoys reading, thrifting, and practicing yoga.

www.SamaraRice.com 

Murphy Severtson is a performance artist, composer, and teaching artist whose work is inspired by queer and trans joy and despair, climate change, Florida, crustaceans, breath, and repetition. As part of the first cohort of the Trans History Project, Baltimore Center Stage and Breaking the Binary Theatre, Murphy is devising and creating music with Mirage Auto Depot on LES BI(T)CHES, a trans-historical experiment spiraling around gender-nonconforming lesbian artists Claude Cahun and Romaine Brooks. As an assistant, Murphy works for Kristin Marting’s Torches Project, a series of 36+ interviews that are part memoir, part oral history, and part cultural inquiry. Other recent projects include performing at The Brick Aux in Mack Lawrence’s DINNER, and production assistant for Paul Pinto’s Mano a Mano at La MaMa. An avid and passionate educator, they work as a teaching artist at the New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers Program, Little Orchestra, and Opera on Tap.

Brian Sonia-Wallace is frequently late and always eulogizing the dead. He has spent the last decade writing poems for people who need them. This is his second libretto for opera, in memoriam of his friend Robbie Cunningham, who, before he died said, “I want to declare war on time. You’re a poet, you should be able to help.” This work follows a decade of collaboration with composer Saunder Choi of choral songs about ecology, resistance, and reinvention, which have premiered nationally at the Kennedy Center, Walt Disney Concert Hall, and other fancy places. Brian is so fancy, he was the Poet Laureate of West Hollywood. He is the author of The Poetry of Strangers and most recently Maze Mouth. People think he’s great. He is gay and tired. Rentpoet.com

About the Creative Team:

O-Lan Jones is an award-winning composer, sound designer, writer, actress and theater visionary who has been experimenting in the performing arts her entire life. The press has called her an, “uncategorizable legend.” She founded Overtone Industries in 1980 to develop and produce new and original opera-theater works. Her early achievements forged the path for modern, experimental opera companies to continue challenging the antiquated perceptions of the art form. As founder and Artistic Director of Overtone, she leads the vision for new works and is focused on fostering a collaborative environment where she and other artists work together to give voice to their authentic stories. She is dedicated to mentoring and supporting fellow creatives, who also refuse to be confined to boundaries, through Overtone’s Original Vision Project. She is also the Choir Director of Lauren Bon’s Metabolic Studio Community Choir. www.o-lanjones.com 

Livia Reiner is a director, dramaturge, and performer based in Los Angeles. She grew up working with O-Lan Jones and Overtone Industries on pieces including Songs and Dances of Imaginary Lands, The Woman in the Wall, and Cynosemma. Recently she assistant directed the world premiere of Overtone’s ICELAND at La Mama’s Ellen Stewart Theater. She has also been an assistant to MacArthur Fellow Annie Dorsen for workshops of Prometheus Firebringer, and her voice was featured in its off-Broadway run at Theater for a New Audience. Composition credits include original music in The Measures Taken (Exponential Festival 2022); recent performance credits include [orpheus] (Highways 2025). She also writes original songs and plays with her sister Rose Reiner and her band M0NOGAMY. She’s a graduate of the University of Chicago.

Fahad Siadat is a “fanciful and downright utopian artist and thinker” (LA Times), Fahad Siadat explores sound as spiritual practice, creating interdisciplinary pieces as a vehicle for unveiling the mystery of our interconnected world. His music is described as “evoking wonder, desire, and terror” (Off Broadway) with narratives that “border on being a spiritual journey” (LA Dance Chronicle). and has been presented by the L.A. County Museum of Art, Broadstage, and Museum of Contemporary Art. Working as a performer, composer, conductor, and curator, Fahad is the director of the Resonance Collective and the award-winning vocal ensemble HEX. His music has been performed in Europe, China, and across the United States. www.fahadsiadat.com

About the Cast: 

Kevin Darnell Allen is a fusion artist - combining a classical music education with his contemporary background. As a graduate of USC’s Thornton School of Music, he’s known for his baritone vocals and deep understanding of the voice shown in his arrangements for contemporary a cappella and jazz groups. Allen has contributed his vocals to projects like Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, CREED III, and Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, and has collaborated with artists like Rihanna, Hozier, Jennifer Hudson, and Pentatonix. As a composer and songwriter, Allen creates romantic soundscapes with therapeutic lyrics. These skills are showcased in his music under the artist name DARNELL with releases like “Letter From Your Future Self” which is currently an entry in NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest. He has also thrived in the classical realm both as a soloist and choral artist, having performed at Chicago Symphony, Disney Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, and across Italy and Ireland. 

Nelle June Anderson happens opera, experimental music, singer-songwriting, energy work, and performance art. She made our operatic debut with the American Symphony Orchestra and has sung with Juno Award-winning baroque orchestra Ensemble Caprice (Ramiro, Motezuma North American tour) and Grammy Award-winning PARTCH Ensemble as Marilyn Monroe/S in LSD—Huxley’s Last Trip (LeBaron), for which we “stunned with her buttery tone” (San Francisco Classical Voice). Her compositions has been performed at REDCAT, Center for the Performing Arts Minneapolis, and in streets, praised for their “production trickery” and “graceful experimentation” (Recording Artists Guild). She happened in Oracle Egg BROILER Residency; HERE BE SIRENS, The Seven Deadly Sins (CalArts); dancer-vocalist (Neoma Butoh, Electric Lodge Daredevil Festival, Philosophical Research Society); improvising saxophonist (soundpedro Season Opening 2025); durational performance art (Torrance Art Museum, NOMAD IV/TRYST 2025); Kurt Cobain’s screaming ghost (Reisig and Taylor Contemporary, Matthew McGaughey, Staged.). We/she/from/inside Minneapolis, Bard College, CalArts, Los Angeles, Ann Arbor. www.nellejanderson.com

Liz Eldridge is an actor, writer, musician, and stand-up from LA with two dogs and a husband who cooks. Television and film work includes “I’m Dying Up Here,” “Queenpins,” “The Affair,” “Devs,” “Rutherford Falls,” “The Middle,” “Silicon Valley,” and many others; she has worked as an actor and composer with LA theaters from Musical Theatre West to the Getty Villa; from the Walt Disney Concert Hall to the top of Mt. Wilson to the Smell, and everywhere in between. Her musical, “Space Rock Opera,” won the Cat’s Crawl Loud Artist and Encore awards and was nominated for the Best Musical and Playwright’s Promise awards at Hollywood Fringe 2025—look out for the soundtrack on vinyl this Spring. Her songs and score of The Unraveling by Katherine Noon won the 2026 Stage Raw Award for Best Original Music. Her next play with music, “LLMM: Larger Language Mycelium Model” will be developed with the Ghost Road Company in 2026. www.lizeldridge.com 

Kion Heidari is a Los Angeles-based vocal artist, composer, musician, and actor. Kion loves to bring detail, subtlety, and depth to his artistry both in performance and creation. He performs in new opera and musical theatre productions and specializes in contemporary, folk, and classical styles. Past credits include The Joining (Synchromy, 2025), At War With Ourselves (2025, as a soloist with Kronos Quartet), Bending the River (Overtone Industries, 2025), Randy Newman’s ‘Faust’ at the Soraya (2024, as a featured soloist), Songs and Dances of Imaginary Lands (Overtone Industries, 2024), and The Conference of the Birds (Resonance Collective, 2022). Ensembles he sings with include HEX, Tonality, and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Kion is also a voice actor for games and animation, film actor, and puppeteer.

Elliot Menard is performer-composer, opera-maker, and producer working at the nexus of opera-theater, new music, and experimental performance. As a composer, Elliot explores how text allows music to emerge, the expressive range of the voice, the interpretive multiplicity of translation, transformation through repetition, and the balance between structure and freedom. As a vocalist, she specializes in interdisciplinary, polystylistic, and experimental opera projects that challenge conventions in narrative and musical form. In addition to her creative work as an opera-maker, she serves as Director of Operations and Producer at Overtone Industries. This role is part of her larger artistic practice of community-building, collaboration, and creating infrastructure that supports emerging voices in experimental opera. elliotmenard.com / instagram/substack: @elliotmenard.

About the Design Team

Alejandro Melendez (Lighting Designer) is a first-generation Latiné designer working in theatre, opera, and live events. Recent credits include a disability-affirmative production of A Midsummer Night's Dream for Phamaly Theatre Company at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts and the West Coast premiere of Dutch Masters at the Odyssey Theatre. He is a 2024 USITT Emerging Creative, a 2023 ETC Fred Foster Mentee, and was selected to take part in the 2023 Latinx Theatre Commons Colaboratorio. Alejandro holds an MFA in Experience Design & Production from CalArts and a BA in Theatre from MSU Denver.

Danica Martino (Costume Designer): Recent design credits include: The Little Mermaid (Playhouse Stage Co.) Angel in the Ashes (La Mama) Much Ado About Nothing (Sun Valley Shakespeare Festival), Mikvah Girls (Hollywood Fringe), Wheels on the Bus (Pasadena Playhouse), Grumpy Monkey (Pasadena Playhouse), Film: Dead Man (Music Video for Alessia Cara), True Heiress Vs. Fake Queen Bee (Reelshort), Bound by Honor (Reelshort) I Watched You Become Death (Feature Film), A Place Where Horses Die (Feature Film). She received her MFA from CalArts. www.danicamartino.com

Jan Munroe (SCENIC DESIGNER/BUILDER) has been involved with the creation and performance of new work wearing many hats since early studies with Marcel Marceau and Etienne Decroux. A founding member of THE MYSTIC KNIGHTS OF THE OINGO-BOINGO, he is a recipient of eleven L.A. Weekly and Drama-Logue awards, an Ovation award, two NEA Theatre fellowships, a CAC "New Genre" fellowship and a Rockefeller Playwright's fellowship. As an actor, he has appeared on TV (This Is Us, Criminal Minds, Brooklyn 99, etc.), in movies (A Few Good Men, Catch Me If You Can, Ford V Ferrari) and in many stage projects. OTHER DESIGNS: John O'Keefe's ALL NIGHT LONG and DON'T YOU EVER CALL ME ANYTHING BUT MOTHER (also directed), THE VIBRATOR PLAY, MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, TO THE BONE and most recently BROWNSTONE (all for OPEN FIST), Playwrights’ Arena’s A HIT DOG WILL HOLLER, Ron Sossi's ELEPHANT SHAVINGS at the Odyssey and A GOOD GUY at Rogue Machine.

About Highways Performance Space

Highways Performance Space is Southern California’s boldest center for new performance, film and visual art. In its 37th year, Highways continues to be an important alternative cultural center in Los Angeles that encourages radical artists from diverse communities to develop and present innovative new works. Highways promotes the development of contemporary socially involved artists and art forms. Their mission is to develop and present innovative performance and visual artists, promote interaction among people of diverse cultural backgrounds and engage artists and the communities they serve in cross-cultural dialogues about social, cultural and artistic issues.

About the Cakes:

Joan Spitler and Leigh Grode began their business, “Cake Divas,” in 1998 out of their mutual love for baked goods and a philosophy of sharing joy through food. In 2013, they changed their name to “Joanie & Leigh’s Cakes” due to a trademark issue.  The tradition of fabulous, divalicious cakes continues under the new name.   “Joanie and Leigh’s Cakes” are known for their original wedding cake designs, over the top artwork, and one-of-a-kind desserts. They have been featured extensively in press, television and film.  Their work has appeared in magazines including  “The Hollywood Reporter, “InStyle”, “People”, “Martha Stewart Weddings”, “TIME” and “Vogue”.  Many television appearances include “Martha Stewart Living”, Preston Bailey’s “Mr. Fabulous”, the first season of WE TV’s “Amazing Wedding Cakes” and “Platinum Weddings”, The Lazy Environmentalist (Sundance), and InStyle Celebrity Weddings” (CBS).  They are regular guests on television and the web showcasing dessert trends and ideas. Joan and Leigh worked with Diane Keaton as her baking coaches for the movie “Because I Said So”. They worked on the Tim Burton film “Alice in Wonderland”, creating the iconic ‘EAT ME’ cake and other Mad Hatter tea party delights.  Their creations have been featured in many films, including “Bridesmaids”, and regularly on a multitude of television shows.