Directing and Dramaturgy

In addition to directing some of the developmental productions of my musicals, since 2018 I’ve worked with composer Ash Fure as dramaturg and co-director with Lilleth Glimcher on two of Ash’s pieces: The Force of Things: An Opera for Objects and Filament for Trio, Orchestra and Moving Voices.

Force of Things: an Opera for Objects

photo by Marina Levitskaya/New York Times

Composed and Created by Ash Fure
Architecture and Created by Adam Fure

Created In Collaboration With The International Contemporary Ensemble

The Force of Things: an Opera for Objects is an immersive work of music theater that wrestles with the animate vitality of matter and the mounting hum of ecological anxiety around us.

I was dramaturg on The Force of Things at Peak Performances at Montclair State University for its American Premiere in 2017, and co-director with Lilleth Glimcher for the production at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival in August 2018.

Read the New York Times Review

Filament

photo by Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times

FILAMENT
for Trio, Orchestra and Moving Voices.

by Ash Fure
Movement and Visual Direction by Lilleth Glimcher and César Alvarez

Commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for its 2018 opening gala, Filament occupied a unique position on that season’s roster, offering the first note conducted on the first concert of the first season under the artistic direction of maestro Jaap Van Zweden.

Filament is scored for orchestra, three amplified soloists (bassoon, trumpet, and double bass) and fifteen moving voices. The soloists perform from pedestals triangulated across the stage and audience while the singers move throughout the hall, projecting their voices through custom 3-D printed megaphones that both amplify and directionally focus each vector of sound.

Performances featured Marisa Michelson’s NYC-based vocal ensemble Constellation Chor. Megaphones were designed by Brandon Clifford and Johanna Lobdell of Matter Design, to amplify and disperse miniscule and carefully composed vocalizations.

Costumes by Tolu Aremu
Lights by Marika Kent

Read a feature in the New York Times