Prototype is the premiere global festival for opera-theatre in New York City.

Schedule of Events:

Terce: A Practical Breviary
60 Minutes

Terce: A Practical Breviary is a radical rethinking of a monastic 9:00 AM mass and an adaptation that reimagines the face of the “Holy Spirit” through the lens of the Divine Feminine. Sung by a community choir of 30-plus women-identifying caregivers and makers, it is a wild meditation/celebration of the sacred mothers alive in all of us and how that manifests in regard to the Earth, each other, and ourselves. Inspired by ideas taken from three primary female mystics (Julian of Norwich, Hildegard von Bingen, and Robin Wall Kimmerer) this non-narrative song cycle blends new music, neo-soul, and gospel with traditional medieval organum— is percussed with active caretaking and craft making and is danced wildly. More of an event than an opera, it is built as an active ritual to celebrate and venerate our feminine alignment with nature and recover from living in the confines of a civilization built to control or ignore it.

Terce: A Practical Breviary is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Commissioning support provided by OPERA America’s Opera Grants for Female Composers program, supported by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation. Additional support provided by Café Royal Cultural Foundation. Commissioned, developed, and produced through HERE&Back as part of PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now.

Dates and Times:

January 10, 11, 17-19, 2024: 7:00 p.m.
January 13 and 20, 2024: 9:00 a.m and 3:00 p.m.
January 14, 2024: 3:00 p.m.

Location: The Space at Irondale, 85 South Oxford Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217.

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Adoration:
90 Minutes

An adaptation of Atom Egoyan’s film of the same name, Adoration follows Simon, an orphaned high school student. As part of a dramatic writing exercise, Simon’s teacher encourages him to appropriate details from a historical terrorist attack as an event perpetrated by his parents. When his story goes viral, Simon uses the hysteria within his community and on the internet to highlight the challenges of intolerance and racism in our society. The fictional and actual circumstances of the loss of Simon’s family are revealed in fragments, only fitting together with the final revelation that the prejudices of Simon’s maternal grandfather led to his parents’ deaths.

Hate is too often portrayed as binary. We either hate or we don’t. We hate someone for something they did or some perceived slight, or we hate “the other.” Yet we are not born with hate—it is learned, nurtured, and developed over the course of a lifetime. Adoration tells two simultaneous stories—a fictional story of terrorism and betrayal juxtaposed with a real story of family strife and rejection of something foreign.

Commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects, Trinity Church Wall Street, with lead commissioners Justus Schlichting and Charlotte Isaacs. Additional commissioning support provided by Susan Bienkowski. Developed by Beth Morrison Projects in association with the University of Southern California Thorton School of Music, Opera Department. Adoration was workshopped at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity as part of the 2023 Opera in the 21st Century Program. Produced by Beth Morrison Projects in association with Trinity Church Wall Street. Additional support is provided by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, and Visionary Women. This project was made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Supported, in part, by an OPERA America Opera Grants for Female Composers award, the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The production of Adoration received funding from OPERA America’s Opera Fund.

Dates and Times:

January 12-13 and 18-20, 2024: 8:00 p.m.
January 14, 2024: 5:00 p.m.

Location: The Sheen Center for Thought and Culture, 18 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10012.

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Angel Island:
90 Minutes

Between 1910 and 1940, many Chinese immigrants flowed through the immigration station on Angel Island inside San Francisco Bay, facing mass discrimination under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, with few exceptions. With music by acclaimed Chinese-American composer Huang Ruo, Angel Island revisits this chapter of American history with a poignant multimedia experience scored for voices and a string quartet that blurs the boundaries of opera, theater, dance, and music. Ruo, along with director Matthew Ozawa, weaves a powerful requiem from the century-old poetry engraved on the detention center’s walls by some of the hundreds of thousands of incarcerated Chinese immigrants. Angel Island arrives amid an ongoing epidemic of brutal violence and rampant discrimination against immigrants, asylum-seekers, and Asians across the diaspora. This production is a stirring plea for care and empathy as well as a visceral, clear-eyed tribute to the rebellion and resilience of those who passed through and perished at Angel Island.

Produced by Beth Morrison Projects in association with Brooklyn Academy of Music. Commissioned by Hewlett 50 Arts Commissions / Del Sol Quartet with a completion commission by Singapore International Festival of Art.

Dates and Times:

January 11-13, 2024: 7:30 p.m.

Location: BAM's Harvey Theater at BAM Strong, 651 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217.

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Chornobyldorf:
145 Minutes

After surviving a series of disasters, the remaining descendants of humanity find themselves in a post-societal world following the death of capitalism, opera, and philosophy. Wandering amongst the ruins of nuclear power plants, abandoned churches, theaters, and galleries, they try to recreate lost civilization through archeological performance-rituals, universal symbols, and signs which are ultimately misinterpreted and gradually dissolve into the white noise of nature.

Chornobyldorf was made possible through generous support during various periods of its development by the House of Europe program, Ukrainian Cultural Foundation, European cultural foundation, Be Strong project, and MitOst e.V. Additional funding provided through the Trust for Mutual Understanding.

Dates and Times:

January 11, 13, 15 and 18-20, 2024: 7:00 p.m.
January 14 and 21, 2024: 6:00 p.m.

Location: La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, Ellen Stewart Theatre, 66 East 4th Street (btw Bowery & 2nd Ave), New York, NY 10003.

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Malinxe:
30 Minutes

Created by Indigenous composers Autumn Chacon (Diné – Navajo/Chicana) and Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache), Malinxe is a contemporary retelling of the myth of La Llorona, or “the weeping woman.” Tracing back to 1550, La Llorona is well-known in American Southwest and Latin American cultures as a vengeful spirit who roams near bodies of water, mourning the children she drowned and warning others of water’s power. In this original opera, Chacon and Ortman examine Malinxe, the real Nahua woman deemed the mother of modern Mexican people, whose complex story is often equated with that of La Llorona. In this interpretation, Malinxe embodies a contemporary woman who submerges herself into La Llorona’s dangerous realm and must make transformative decisions to save her own spirit from continuing down the destructive path of La Llorona. In this interpretation, Malinxe is a woman outside of time who is submerged in Llorona’s dangerous realm and must realize herself. Physically set alongside a body of water, Malinxe will be performed by experimental musicians and artists hailing from New Mexico and New York. Produced and commissioned by Prototype, hosted by The Battery Conservancy.

Date and Time:

January 20, 2024: 5:00 p.m.

Location: The Playscape at Battery Park, 20 State Street, New York, NY 10004.

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The Promise:
100 minutes

“The Promise” is a captivating modern song cycle that explores profound themes of identity, origin, motherhood, and the complexities of human relationships in our modern era. Created by the internationally acclaimed Dutch singer-songwriter Wende in collaboration with the Royal Court Theatre and composed together with renowned English composer Isobel Waller-Bridge, “The Promise” creates a rich and diverse musical landscape that seamlessly blends various genres and showcases Wende’s incredibly versatile vocal range. The lyrics, collectively written through workshops by a group of leading female writers associated with the Royal Court Theatre, including EV Crowe, Debris Stevenson, Stef Smith, Somalia Seaton, and Sabrina Mahfouz, delve into themes often overlooked in traditional songbooks, capturing the essence of the female experience. This one-woman musical serves as a powerful testament to the significance of promises in shaping our lives and relationships, highlighting the importance of our own commitment, trust, and resilience in the lifelong journey called self-discovery.

The Song Project is a co-production of Stichting WENDE, the Royal Court Theatre London and International Theater Amsterdam.

Made Possible in part by Fonds Podiumkunsten.

Dates and Times:

January 10, 11 and 13, 2024: 9:00 p.m.
January 13 and 14, 2024: 4:00 p.m.

Location: HERE Mainstage, 145 6th Avenue, New York, NY 10013.

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Dates: January 10 - 21, 2024

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