Kim Whitener News

PROTOTYPE: Opera | Theatre | Now has announced the lineup for 2025, set to resume January 9-19, 2025. This will mark the final season co-produced by HERE and co-curated by Kristin Marting, who founded the Festival together with Beth Morrison and Kim Whitener, and who is also the outgoing Founding Artistic Director of HERE.

The Hop-produced contemporary opera centers Black healing and community in New York on the 10th anniversary of Eric Garner’s killing.

The Flea will present The Ritual of Breath, a transdisciplinary opera and creative act of resistance, as partof Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City series. Learn more and see how to attend!

In honor of the tenth anniversary of Eric Garner's killing, Dartmouth has announced The Ritual of Breath Is the Rite to Resist is extending beyond the stage with a series of community activations in NYC in collaboration with 20+ civic partners united in resisting the ongoing theft of Black life at the hands of the state and uplifting the healing power of art and communal gathering.

HERE will honor Founding Artistic Director Kristin Marting at HERE’s 30th Anniversary Gala on June 3, 2024.

This September, the Hopkins Center for the Arts (the Hop) at Dartmouth will premiereThe Ritual of Breath Is the Rite to Resist, a chamber opera that responds to the murder of Eric Garner and the ongoing loss of Black life at the hands of police.

With its eighth innovative season in 2020, PROTOTYPE: Opera | Theatre | Now continues its rigorous exploration of the work, producing and presenting an abundance of provocative shows in the interstitial realms between music, operatic tradition, and theatre. This season, Beth Morrison Projects and HERE's meteoric annual festival lands on stages across New York from January 9-18, presenting 6 works by 23 composers and librettists along with hundreds of collaborators - productions ranging from black-box chamber opera to multi-media rock concerts. 

New York's PROTOTYPE OperaTheatreNow Festival returns for its seventh season from January 5 to the 13th and the one thing that you can't ask about it is “What's new?” That's not because there's nothing to answer. On the contrary--there's too much, in style, in content, in the sizes of its venues: This year's Festival is larger than ever, with a dozen works, 24 composerlibrettists and over 150 collaborators.

The saying, 'Good things come to those who wait,' could certainly be applied to the world premiere of The Good Swimmer playing at BAM's Fishman Space as part of the Next Wave festival from November 28th-December 1st. Defined as a pop requiem for the youth of the Vietnam War, this collaboration between Heidi Rodewald (music) and Donna Di Novelli (lyrics) directed by Kevin Newbury has been the better part of a decade in the making since the two women began working on the piece at a Eugene O'Neill Theater Center residency and left with three songs based on text from out-of-print lifesaving manuals that would become the foundation of The Good Swimmer -- the title song, 'Red Cross' and 'Double Drowning'.

PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now announces 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).

In 1993, HERE barged into Soho and threw one hell of a party. It's been 25 years and the world has changed, but the OBIE-winning producer and presenter is still HERE.

Opera/Theatre/Now announces 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).

HERE's Board of Directors announces that long-time Producing/Executive Director Kim Whitener will step down from HERE Art Center this fall to return to creative producing and consulting with her company KiWi Productions, where she will work with a range of US artists and companies primarily in the contemporary opera-theater and music-theater worlds.

Beginning tomorrow, July 28, designer, director, master puppeteer, and MacArthur "genius" Basil Twist will perform in his singular creation, Symphonie Fantastique, during all Saturdayevening performances. The 20th-anniversary production, which has received near universal acclaim and is scheduled to close on September 2, will include Twist on July 28, August 4, 11, 18, 25 and September 1 at 8:30pm. Set to Hector Berlioz's revolutionary 1830 score, Symphonie Fantastique, for the first time in New York, features live piano accompaniment by Christopher O'Riley. Hailed as a creative masterpiece when it debuted in 1998, the production, which opened on April 4, is a presentation from HERE's Dream Music Puppetry Program and a centerpiece of HERE's 25th anniversary season.

HERE is thrilled to present Cabaret Fantastique, a culminating concert event featuring pianist Christopher O'Riley who performs his haunting solo piano arrangements of songs by Radiohead, Nirvana, Pink Floyd, The Smiths, Elliott Smith, Portishead, and Sun Kil Moon. Master puppeteer and MacArthur "genius" Basil Twist and company members from Symphonie Fantastique will accompany O'Riley with new puppet work. The one-of-a-kind event will take place on August 19 at 7pm. Known to millions as the host of NPR's From the Top, O'Riley is currently performing live piano accompaniment for Basil Twist's Symphonie Fantastique, which continues performances at HERE until September 2.

HERE (Kristin Marting, Founding Artistic Director, and Kim Whitener, Executive Director) is proud to announce its 2018-2019 season, which marks the OBIE-winning institution's 26th year of producing of daring new hybrid performance by new artists from all disciplines - theatre, music, art, dance, puppetry, and media art.

PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now is pleased to announce programming for the seventh annual festival of fresh opera-theatre & music-theatre running January 5-13, 2019, featuring eight presentations that "shift the whole paradigm of what opera is and can be" (New York Observer).

HERE (Kristin Marting, Founding Artistic Director, and Kim Whitener, Executive Director) is proud to close their 25th anniversary season with the commissioned world premiere of American Weather, a new work by director and designer Chris Green, a member of the HERE Artist Residency Program since 2016. With a bittersweet verve, American Weather is a visceral work of material performance inspired by daily life in America.

On June 4, the OBIE-winner HERE will honor Tony Award-winner Eve Ensler and HERE's board chair and star attorney Bethany Haynes at Out of the Box for 25 Years, HERE's 25th Anniversary Gala. The evening celebrates HERE's quarter of a century history as a leader in thinking creatively, reimagining performance practice and taking audiences to new frontiers. HERE has been a champion for unconventional theater artists, puppeteers, musicians, and dancers for 25 years including Ensler, whose groundbreaking The Vagina Monologues was developed and premiered at HERE in 1996.

In response to overwhelming demand and near universal critical acclaim, Symphonie Fantastique - the singular creation by designer, director, master puppeteer, and MacArthur "genius" Basil Twist - extends its 20th anniversary engagement to July 15. Set to Hector Berlioz's revolutionary 1830 score, Symphonie Fantastique, for the first time in New York, features live piano accompaniment by Christopher O'Riley. Hailed as a creative masterpiece when it debuted in 1998, the production, which opened on April 4, is a presentation from HERE's Dream Music Puppetry Program and a centerpiece of HERE's 25th anniversary season.