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For Immediate Release - March 15, 2022 (New York, NY) - Black Lodge, a new film that blends rock and opera and produced by Beth Morrison Projects has its world premiere as part of Opera Philadelphia’s Festival O22. This surreal work is composed by David T. Little, with libretto by legendary poet Anne Waldman, and screenplay and direction by Michael Joseph McQuilken.
“Be very careful what you need to know.” So warns the unnamed protagonist of David T. Little’s newest operatic and cinematic creation, Black Lodge. This bold, surrealist new work with a libretto by legendary poet Anne Waldman and screenplay and direction by Michael Joseph McQuilken blends opera and rock into an alchemical exploration of magic, mystery, regret, and redemption. Black Lodge is an inspired and radical reconsideration of the operatic form by one of America’s most prolific and daring opera composers.
Trapped in a nightmarish Bardo, a place between death and rebirth, a tormented writer faces down demons of his own making. Forced to confront his darkest moment, he mines fractured and repressed memories for a way out. Loosely inspired by the complicated mythologies of writer William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch) and others, Black Lodge uses industrial rock and opera to take viewers through a surreal Lynchian escape room, and questions what it takes to face our demons and ultimately, to face ourselves.
The Festival O22 performances on Saturday, Oct. 1 and Sunday, Oct. 2 will spotlight the Black Lodge film with live musical performance by singer and band Timur & the Dime Museum and members of the Opera Philadelphia Orchestra and will serve as the capstone of O22’s exploration of Opera on Film. Shortly after the festival, the film will make its streaming debut on the Opera Philadelphia Channel.
Opera commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects and the Allen R. and Judy Brick Freedman Venture Fund for Opera.
Film commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects, Opera Philadelphia, the Allen R. and Judy Brick FreedmanVenture Fund for Opera, David & Kiki Gindler, Charlotte Isaacs, and Thomas H. Platz with additional support provided by the Howard Gilman Foundation.
Developed by Beth Morrison Projects, California Institute for the Arts, HERE Arts Center, and REDCAT. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
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About Beth Morrison Projects
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Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) is one of the foremost creators and producers of new opera-theatre and music theatre, with a fierce commitment to leading the industry into the future, cultivating a new generation of talent, and telling the stories of our time.
Founded by “contemporary opera mastermind” (LA Times) Beth Morrison, who was honored as one of Musical America’s Artists of the Year/Agents of Change in 2020, BMP has grown into “a driving force behind America’s thriving opera scene” (Financial Times), with Opera News declaring that the company, “more than any other… has helped propel the art form into the twenty-first century.”
Operating across the US and internationally, with offices in Brooklyn and Los Angeles, BMP’s unique model offers living composers the support, guidance, and freedom to experiment, allowing them to create singularly innovative and impactful projects. Since forming in 2006, the company has commissioned, developed, produced and toured over 50 works in 14 countries around the world, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning chamber operas Angel’s Bone and p r i s m.
In 2013, BMP co-founded the PROTOTYPE Festival with HERE Arts Center, which has been called “utterly essential” (The New York Times), “indispensable” (The New Yorker), and “one of the world’s top festivals of contemporary opera and theater” (Associated Press).
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David T. Little is “one of the most imaginative young composers” on the scene (The New Yorker), with “a knack for overturning musical conventions” (The New York Times). His operas Dog Days, JFK, and Vinkensport (librettos by Royce Vavrek), and his GRAMMY®-nominated Soldier Songs have been widely acclaimed, “prov[ing] beyond any doubt that opera has both a relevant present and a bright future” (The New York Times). Little’s music has been presented by the LA Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, LA Opera, Park Avenue Armory, Lincoln Center Festival, Kennedy Center, Holland Festival, Opéra de Montréal, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Little is currently composing a new opera for GRAMMY-winning tenor Karim Sulayman and Alarm Will Sound, based on Garth Greenwell’s celebrated novel What Belongs to You, and developing a new work commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera / Lincoln Center Theater new work program. He is published by Boosey & Hawkes.
https://davidtlittle.com/
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Internationally recognized and acclaimed poet Anne Waldman has been an active member of the “Outrider” experimental poetry community, a culture she has helped create and nurture for over four decades as writer, editor, teacher, performer, magpie scholar, infra-structure curator, and cultural/political activist. Her poetry is recognized in the lineage of Whitman and Ginsberg, and in the Beat, New York School, and Black Mountain trajectories of the New American Poetry. But has raised the bar as a feminist, activist and powerful performer. She has read in the streets as well as numerous larger venues such as the Dodge Literary Festival in the USA and the Jaipur Literature Festival in India and continues to teach poetics all over the world. She remains a highly original “open field investigator” of consciousness, committed to the possibilities of radical shifts of language and states of mind to create new modal structures and montages of attention. Her work is energetic, passionate, panoramic, fierce at times. https://www.annewaldman.org/
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About Michael Joseph McQuilken
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McQuilken originally hails from Portland, Oregon, where he was raised in a working-class home by social worker parents who were terrified that his artistic tendencies would leave him perpetually broke. These fears were not allayed when 20-something Michael became a professional street performer for three years, making music with garbage. Fortunately, he finagled a scholarship-fueled higher education, and now he is a not-quite-broke director, writer, filmmaker, and composer in Jersey City. He holds degrees in directing and sound engineering, and has an amazing wife, Adina, who tolerates his restless creative tendencies that have taken over the majority of the space in their home.
https://www.michaeljosephmcquilken.com/
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