Mildred Davenport News

'I know you want everything to be clear and simple' is the last chorus of the fabulous chamber opera, 'Acquanetta', about the voluptuous, B-movie actress who had a sunstorm of celebrity in the 1940s. Indeed, the narrative structure 'Acquanetta' is rather uncomplicated based on a single scene in the cult classic 'Captive Wild Women' where Acquanetta played a wild, ravishing creature surgically transmuted from an ape by a mad doctor. But 'Acquanetta''s themes are anything but simple. By fusing the essentials of cinema, opera and drama to stunning effect, 'Acquanetta' renders a mesmerizing, multi-layered contemplation of illusion and identity. Directed by Daniel Fish, who re-interpreted 'Oklahoma' (which started at Bard), 'Acquanetta' is both an amazing, technical tour-de-force and thrilling, theatrical experience.

ACQUANETTA, which just opened at Bard's SummerScape, was the piece that opened 2018's edition of PROTOTYPE festival in New York. Musically and dramatically, written by Michael Gordon, composer (of 'Bang on a Can' fame), Deborah Artman, librettist (ditto), the piece is very much in a class of its own.

The 2019 Bard SummerScape festival presents a pair of important new dance and theater works next month. On July 5-7, Evidence, A Dance Company and its founder and artistic director, Ronald K. Brown, make their festival debut with the world premiere of Grace and Mercy. A new SummerScape commission, this two-part program pairs Grace (live), a 20th-anniversary version of Brown's soulful masterpiece Grace, now danced entirely to live music performed by Peven Everett, Gordon Chambers, and others, with the world premiere of Mercy, Brown's new companion piece, which is set to a brand-new score written and performed live by ten-time Grammy-nominee Meshell Ndegeocello.

The 2019 Bard SummerScape festival takes a contemporary look at Hollywood's Golden Age in Acquanetta, a visual and musical tour-de-force inspired by the eponymous B-movie star with a mysterious past. Combining theater, opera, and film in a haunting meditation on identity, transformation, stereotypes, and typecasting from composer and Bang on a Can co-founder Michael Gordon and his longtime collaborator, librettist Deborah Artman, Acquanetta originally premiered at the PROTOTYPE Festival, where it was a New York Times and New York magazine "Critics' Pick" and one of the New York Classical Review's "Top Ten Performances of 2018."by Daniel Fish, whose previous SummerScape staging (a revelatory new take on Oklahoma!), scoring the visionary director a 2019 Tony nomination.

The 2019 Bard SummerScape festival takes a contemporary look at Hollywood's Golden Age in Acquanetta, a visual and musical tour-de-force inspired by the eponymous B-movie star with a mysterious past. Combining theater, opera, and film in a haunting meditation on identity, transformation, stereotypes, and typecasting from composer and Bang on a Can co-founder Michael Gordon and his longtime collaborator, librettist Deborah Artman, Acquanetta originally premiered at the PROTOTYPE Festival.

This summer's 16th annual Bard SummerScape festival comprises more than seven weeks of music, opera, theater, dance, film, and cabaret, centered around the 30th anniversary season of the Bard Music Festival, 'Korngold and His World.'

This summer's 16th annual Bard SummerScape festival comprises more than seven weeks of music, opera, theater, dance, film, and cabaret, centered around the 30th anniversary season of the Bard Music Festival, 'Korngold and His World.' This intensive examination of the life and times of Erich Wolfgang Korngold

'Memories of Things Past'--'A la recherche du temps perdu' in Proust-speak--and very much in the past it was, for me at least, going in to ACQUANETTA, the piece that opened this year's iteration of the PROTOTYPE. Its name and purported subject--horror films--conjured up childhood memories for me. Musically and dramatically, however, ACQUANETTA--by Michael Gordon, composer (of 'Bang on a Can' fame), Deborah Artman, librettist (ditto)--was very much in the present and in a class of its own, seen January 10 at the Gelsey Kirkland Arts Center.

Beth Morrison Projects and HERE Arts Center have announced programming for Out of Bounds 2018, a series of short, free performances of new works in public spaces, presented in its second season as part of the sixth annual PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now, running January 7-20, 2018 in New York City.

PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now invigorates New York City January 7-20, 2018, with the sixth annual showcase of progressive opera and music-theatre, curated by co-founding directors Kristin Marting (of HERE), Beth Morrison (of Beth Morrison Projects) and Kim Whitener (of HERE), along with newly appointed co-director Jecca Barry (of Beth Morrison Projects). Since its launch in 2013, the Prototype Festival has presented a phenomenal 32 new works across five seasons, propelling the industry forward as a first-rate presenter and influencer.