Beth Morris News

HERE proudly presents the world premiere of The Reception, a HERE Resident Artist Production, as part of its 2016-2017 producing season.  Created by Sean Donovan and Sebastian Calderon Bentin (Donovan & Calderon) in collaboration with the company, and co-directed by Sebastian Calderon Bentin and Sean Donovan, this new dance theater work is performed by Jane Comfort, Leslie Cuyjet, Sean Donovan, Hannah Heller and Ishmael Houston Jones. The Reception will have 10 performances, June 14 - 24, at HERE (145 Sixth Avenue, just below Spring Street).

On May 25, following the "resounding success" (New York Observer) of its world premiere before an audience of thousands last summer, The Hubble Cantata comes to the Kennedy Center, where VisionIntoArt/National Sawdust (VIA/NS) and Beth Morrison Projects present its DC premiere.

Launching Miller Theatre's new Chamber Opera Commissioning Initiative  Miller Theatre at Columbia University and Nebraska's Opera Omaha announced today their plans for the New York premiere of Proving Up, a new opera from the Brooklyn-based creative team of composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek, two of the most important new talents in American music.

On Monday, May 1, HERE honors award-winning director Anne Kauffman and President of the Scherman Foundation, Mike Pratt, at HERE's annual gala.  This year's gala, entitled MOXIE!, begins at 6:00pm with The Sassy Supper at City Winery (155 Varick Street) featuring VIP Cocktail Reception, silent auction, dinner and performances, and continues with the Guts & Glamour Party, beginning at 8:30pm at HERE (145 Sixth Avenue), with cocktails, delectables, silent auction, performances and dancing. 

On May 12 & 13, the Grammy Award-winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus will premiere their new work Silent Voices at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House. Silent Voices is a fully-staged multimedia, multi-composer work conceived, commissioned, produced, and performed by the chorus, and comes at the culmination of their year-long 25th anniversary season.

Laguna Playhouse has announced the final announced production of its 2017-2018 season of shows, written and directed by Hershey Felder, NATHAN GUNN, FLYING SOLO.

HERE proudly presents CasablancaBox, a HERE Resident Artist Production, as part of its 2016-2017 producing season.  Written by Sara Farrington and directed by Reid Farrington, this original multi-media play will have 23 performances, in a premiere production, April 5 - 29 at HERE (145 Sixth Avenue, just below Spring Street).

The OBIE-winning HERE presents CULTUREMART 2017, taking place tonight, March 15, through March 25.

When Opera Philadelphia's new adaptation of Lars von Trier's searing Oscar-nominated film,Breaking the Waves made its world premiere in September 2016, the New York Times declared the opera "ambitious, accomplished, [and] dramatically direct.'

HERE proudly presents CasablancaBox, a HERE Resident Artist Production, as part of its 2016-2017 producing season.  Written by Sara Farrington and directed by Reid Farrington, this original multi-media play will have 21 performances, in a premiere production, April 5 - 29 at HERE (145 Sixth Avenue, just below Spring Street).

When Opera Philadelphia's new adaptation of Lars von Trier's searing Oscar-nominated film, Breaking the Waves made its world premiere in September 2016, the New York Times declared the opera "ambitious, accomplished, [and] dramatically direct," and Opera News said it "stands among the best 21st-century American operas yet produced." It has since earned an International Opera Award nomination for Best World Premiere and made its New York debut with Beth Morrison Projects' Prototype Festival to continued acclaim.

Cathedral of St. John the Divine...will present Benjamin Britten's powerful invocation of the perils of battle, the War Requiem on Thursday, April 6th, 2017 and Friday, April 7th, 2017 at 7:30 pm, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, 1047 Amsterdam Avenue (at 112th Street).

Repast Baroque Ensemble will be in concert on Friday, March 17 and Saturday, March 18 - 8:00 PM both days, performing Handel and the Voice, March 17 at McKinney Chapel @ First Unitarian Church, 116 Pierrepont Street, between Clinton St. & Monroe Pl. in Brooklyn Heights and March 18 at Advent Lutheran Church, 2504 Broadway at 93rd St. in Manhattan.

In association with Beth Morrison Projects and VisionIntoArt, The Aging Magician now celebrates its off Broadway premiere with The New 42nd Street at the New Victory Theater - a theater dedicated to providing children with quality (and usually fantastic) productions in the very heart of Times Square. The Aging Magician is a sensuous piece that is as much a feast for the mind as it is a tug to the heartstrings. It is enigmatic, almost like being lost in a Tim Burton inspired circus with a need to explain the sadness of nostalgia, mixed in with the wonder of keeping those memories alive; it is a show that is perhaps more magical to adults than to children, adults who can understand the almost ethereal pull of a past one does not wish to be gone.

Co-created by Tony Award nominee and Drama Desk Award winner Julian Crouch (Hedwig and the Angry Inch; The Addams Family; Shockheaded Peter, New Vic 1999; Wolves in the Walls, New Vic 2007), Grammy Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Rinde Eckert (Renee Fleming VOICES, Orpheus X, Horizon, And God Created Great Whales) and composer and National Sawdust and VisionIntoArt Director Paola Prestini (Gilgamesh, Labyrinth Installation Concertos, The Hubble Cantata), Aging Magician makes its Off-Broadway Premiere at The New Victory Theater tonight, March 3, through March 12, 2017.

Antaeus Theatre Company will name its new venue at 110 E. Broadway in the City of Glendale the Kiki & David Gindler Performing Arts Center in honor of the Gindlers' $1 million capital campaign contribution and long-standing patronage.

SF Opera Lab presents composer Ted Hearne's universally acclaimed digital-age oratorio The Source, drawn from the contents of Chelsea Manning's WikiLeaks release and called 'some of the most expressive socially engaged music in recent memory-from any genre' by Pitchfork. Previously performed in New York City and Los Angeles, the six performances of The Source this weekend, February 24-26, and March 1-3, 2017 at the Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater open Season Two of San Francisco Opera's SF Opera Lab programming. Scroll down for a first look at the production!

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts today announced a weeklong celebration to honor the 100th anniversary of the birth of its namesake, the late President John F. Kennedy-whose 100th birthday would have been May 29, 2017. The Center kicked off its Centennial celebration last May, and by the end of 2017, will have presented a suite of more than 50 distinct programs inspired by five ideals often ascribed to President Kennedy: Courage, Freedom, Justice, Service, and Gratitude. Special performances fromMay 23-29, 2017 span theater programs, dance, music, and the return of the Center's popular Open House, which all memorialize the life and legacy of America's 35th President. Highlights include performances by DJ Spooky, Yo-Yo Ma with the National Symphony Orchestra, the world premieres of Kennedy Center commissions by composer Mason Bates and Company E, and special Open House performances by Bandaloop, Flexn, and others. Additional programs through 2017 will be announced at a future date.

SF Opera Lab presents composer Ted Hearne's universally acclaimed digital-age oratorio The Source, drawn from the contents of Chelsea Manning's WikiLeaksrelease and called 'some of the most expressive socially engaged music in recent memory-from any genre" by Pitchfork. Previously performed in New York City and Los Angeles, the six performances of The Source on February 24-26 and March 1-3, 2017 at the Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater open Season Two of San Francisco Opera's SF Opera Lab programming.

The OBIE-winning HERE proudly presents CULTUREMART 2017, taking place March 15 - 25.  In this annual festival, CULTUREMART, process becomes the focus, offering a first look at live performance in various stages of development from the boundary-breaking artists in the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP) as they journey to mainstage production.