Beth Morrison Projects Announces West Coast and New York Premieres of David T. Little and Anne Waldman's Black Lodge

The West Coast premiere will take place on October 19, 2024 with CAP UCLA at The United Theater on Broadway Los Angeles, CA, and includes a pre-show immersive experience titled BARDO created by Sandra Powers 

The New York premiere takes place January 11-15, 2025 with pre-show BARDO on opening night at Village East by Angelika New York, NY as a part of the PROTOTYPE: OPERA | THEATRE | NOW 2025 Festival

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For Immediate Release (New York, NY): Beth Morrison Projects has announced both the West Coast and New York premieres of composer David T. Little and librettist Anne Waldman's experimental opera work Black Lodge. Drawing on the complicated mythologies of the surrealist writer William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch), Black Lodge uses dance, industrial rock, classical string quartet, and opera to take viewers through a Lynchian psychological escape room, with story, screenplay, and film/stage direction by Michael VQ. The production will be presented as a film, accompanied by a live band. In November 2023, Black Lodge was nominated for a GRAMMY™ Award for Best Opera Recording.

Set in a nightmarish Bardo, a place between death and rebirth, a tormented writer faces down demons of his own making. Forced to confront the darkest moment in his life, he mines fractured and repressed memories for a way out. A woman is at the center of all the writer’s afterlife encounters. She is the subject of his life’s greatest regret, and she materializes everywhere in this Otherworld. The writer cannot detach any thoughts of his life from her.

The West Coast premiere will be in presented in partnership with CAP UCLA at the The United Theater on Broadway in Los Angeles, CA on October 19, 2024. For the West Coast premiere, BMP will also include a pre-show immersive experience titled BARDO - created and directed by Sandra Powers, composed by David T. Little and produced by Beth Morrison Projects. The audience will be invited to step into the haunted world of BARDO, a liminal space between life and death where lost souls linger, awaiting passage to the next realm. In this immersive pre-show experience, you will confront your deepest secrets as you wander dark corridors amidst trapped shadows, tormented souls, and mystifying creatures, all bound to this otherworldly realm, in search of escape. It will be the Halloween event of the season, and all are encouraged to attend in costume. Tickets and info for the West Coast premiere can be found HERE.

Black Lodge will have its New York premiere at Village East by Angelika on January 11, 2025  featuring BARDO as the pre-show on opening night, with shows happening nightly through January 15 as a part of the PROTOTYPE: OPERA | THEATRE | NOW 2025 Festival.. Tickets and info for the New York premiere can be found HERE.

Black Lodge was 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 Freedman Venture 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. Additional production support provided by David & Kiki Gindler, Charlotte Isaacs, and Thomas H. Platz. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

About Beth Morrison Projects

Founded in 2006 to support the work of living composers and their multi-media collaborators, Beth Morrison Projects encourages risk-taking, creating a structure for new work that is unique to the artist and allows them to feel safe to experiment and push boundaries. Noted as “the edge of innovation" (Opera News), Beth Morrison Projects is a “contemporaryopera mastermind” (Los Angeles Times) and “its own genre" (OperaNews). Projects have been performed at numerous prestigious venues and festivals around the world including Brooklyn Academy of Music, Disney Hall, The Barbican, Lincoln Center, The Walker Art Center, The Beijing Music Festival, New Visions Arts Festival, The Holland Festival, O Festival Rotterdam and more. Recent and upcoming projects include works by composers Michael Gordon, Ted Hearne, Huang Ruo, David T. Little, Missy Mazzoli, Emma O’Halloran, Paola Prestini, Ellen Reid, Sarah Kirkland Snider and more, with directors Tom Creed, James Darrah, Rachel Dickstein, Lee Sunday Evans, Patricia McGregor, Zoe Aja Moore, Kevin Newbury, Matthew Ozawa, Karmina Silec, Jay Scheib, Michael VQ and Basil Twist.

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