Here And Opera On Tap Present World Premiere of LOOKING AT YOU, September 6-21

Immersive Techno-Noir Opera by Composer Kamala Sankaram, Librettist Rob Handel, and Director Kristin Marting Confronts Surveillance Capitalism and Erosion of Individual Privacy

“Kamala tackles the implications of digital privacy laws through an energetic, playful score and interactive multimedia which draw the audience into the discussion on a very personal level; Rob Handel’s delightfully nerdy libretto makes this a killer trifecta.” – WQXR

HERE (Kristin Marting, Founding Artistic Director) and Opera on Tap in association with Experiments in Opera is proud to present the world premiere of Looking at You (September 6–21) by composer Kamala Sankaram, librettist Rob Handel, and director Kristin Marting. Looking at You is an immersive techno-noir operatic experience that confronts surveillance capitalism and the erosion of individual privacy in a digitized world. Driven by a dynamic score for three saxophones, piano, and electronics, Looking at You is a story of high-tech espionage and romance fusing Edward Snowden and Casablanca. Reflecting the audience’s online identity in real time, Looking at You raises urgent questions surrounding online communication, privacy, and the reinvention of capitalism in the age of public data.

Set in Silicon Hills, Looking at You invites the audience inside the corporate headquarters of Rix to celebrate the launch of the company’s new app CheckUOut. As guests order a complimentary drink from a singing, computer-generated assistant, a swirl of operatic voices, EDM and crime jazz surrounds them. Soon, strands of unique user data begin to be folded into the lyrics and visual content of the live performance.

Looking at You is a collaboration between cutting-edge artists, decision researchers, and coders. Artists Sankaram, Handel, and Marting have collaborated with behavioral economist Alessandro Acquisti and his team at Carnegie Mellon’s Privacy Economics Experiments Laboratory; Ralph Gross, chief scientist for BluPanda; Bandcamp co-founder Joe Holt; Bandcamp head programmer Daniel Dickison; and video designer David Bengali to mine public data in real time during each performance through a custom-designed system, which at times includes 32 distinct streams of video.

“The global architecture of the Internet is a double-edged sword,” says composer Kamala Sankaram. “On the one hand, it facilitates access to knowledge, economic growth, and freedom of expression. On the other, it erodes our right to individual privacy. Looking at You questions how loss of privacy could transform us as a global culture and confronts the audience with the fact that their personal information is available to anyone who cares to search for it.”

Under the music direction of Samuel McCoy, Looking at You features performances by Paul An, Blythe Gaissert, Adrienne Danrich, Eric McKeever, Brandon Snook, and Mikki Sodergren, as well as instrumentalists Mila Henry, Jeff Hudgins, Ed RosenBerg, and Josh Sinton.

The additional creative team for Looking at You includes Nic Benacerraf (environment), Kate Fry (costumes), Ayumu Poe Saegusa (lighting), and Nathaniel Butler (sound engineer).

Fourteen performances of Looking at You will take place September 6–21 (see schedule above) at HERE, 145 Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. Critics are welcome as of September 6 for an official opening on September 8. Tickets — priced at $15 previews (September 6 & 7), $25 general admission, $45 premium reserved, and $50 pay-it-forward (including a $25 tax deduction) —can be purchased by visiting here.org or by calling 212-647-0202. In person sales at the box office after 5pm only on performance days and two hours prior to curtain for matinees. For Group Sales, contact tickets@here.org.

About the Artists

Praised as “strikingly original” (New York Times), and a “new voice from whom we will surely be hearing more” (Los Angeles Times), Kamala Sankaram’s (composer) recent commissions include Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Shakespeare Theatre Comapany, Opera on Tap, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, among others. Awards, grants and residencies include: Jonathan Larson Award, NEA ArtWorks, MAP Fund, Opera America, NY IT Award for Outstanding Production of a Musical, the Civilians, HERE, the MacDowell Colony, and the Watermill Center. Also a performer, notable appearances include the LA Philharmonic, the LA Opera, and the PROTOTYPE Festival, and, among others. Kamala is the leader of Bombay Rickey, an operatic Bollywood surf ensemble (recipient of two awards for Best Eclectic Album from the Independent Music Awards). Her 2019/2020 Season includes premieres at HERE, the Glimmerglass Festival, and Houston Grand Opera. Dr. Sankaram holds a PhD from the New School and is currently a member of the composition faculty at SUNY Purchase. www.kamalasankaram.com

Rob Handel (librettist) is a librettist and playwright. With composer Kamala Sankaram: The Infinite Energy of Ada Lovelace (Opera Ithaca) and Bombay Rickey (Meets the Psychology of Desire) (PROTOTYPE at HERE, Tête à Tête in London, New Camerata Opera at The Flea). With composer Eric Moe: The Artwork of the Future, developed at New Dramatists, where Handel was a resident playwright from 2008-2015. His plays have been produced by New York Stage and Film, Long Wharf, Target Margin, Theatre Vertigo (Portland, OR), Rorschach Theatre (DC), Just Theater/Shotgun Players (Berkeley), and Curious Theatre (Denver). Residencies include the Royal Court, Donmar Warehouse, O’Neill Playwrights Conference, Soho Rep, and Portland Center Stage. Handel heads the dramatic writing program at Carnegie Mellon, served on the board of the MacDowell Colony, and was a founding member of 13P. He lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, poet Joy Katz, and their son.

Kristin Marting (director) is a director of hybrid work based in New York City. Over the last 25 years, she has constructed 28 stage works, including 9 original hybrid works, 5 opera-theatre and music-theatre works, 9 re-imaginings of novels and 5 classic plays. Marting has directed 19 works at HERE and also premiered works at BAM (Opera House), 3LD, Ohio Theatre, and Soho Rep. Her work has toured to 7 Stages, Berkshire Festival, Brown, MCA, New World, Painted Bride, Perishable, UMass, Moscow Art Theatre, London and Oslo. She has directed readings and workshops for Clubbed Thumb, EST, New Georges, Playwrights Horizons, Public Theatre, Target Margin, and others. Selected residencies include Cal Arts, LMCC, Mabou Mines, MASS MOCA, NACL, Orchard Project, Playwrights Center, Smack Mellon, Voice & Vision and Williams. Marting was recently named a nytheatre.com Person of the Decade for outstanding contribution, a Woman to Watch by ArtTable and honored with a BAX10 Award. She is Founding Artistic Director of HERE and Co-Founding Director of PROTOTYPE, the opera-music-theatre festival.

About HERE

The OBIE-winning HERE (Kristin Marting, Founding Artistic Director) was named a Top Ten Off-Off Broadway Theatre by Time Out New York, is a leader in the field of producing and presenting new, hybrid performance viewed as a seamless integration of artistic disciplines—theater, dance, music and opera, puppetry, media, visual and installation, spoken word and performance art.

HERE’s standout productions include Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, Taylor Mac’s The Lily’s Revenge, Trey Lyford & Geoff Sobelle’s all wear bowlers, Young Jean Lee’s Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, James Scruggs’ Disposable Men, Corey Dargel’s Removable Parts, Robin Frohardt’s The Pigeoning, and Basil Twist’s Symphonie Fantastique.

The HERE & Back program encompasses projects produced by HERE and helmed by established artists with deep connections to HERE. For audiences, HERE & Back provides the chance to experience daring performances by high-profile multidisciplinary artists in our intimate spaces. For the artists, HERE remains a special home for their work and a space open to risk-taking. Current HERE & Back artists include former HARP Artist Kamala Sankaram (Miranda), HERE’s Founding Artistic Director Kristin Marting (Trade Practices), and Resident Playwright Taylor Mac (The Lily’s Revenge).

HERE is also recognized nationally and internationally for the annual PROTOTYPE festival of opera-theatre and music-theatre, co-founded and co-produced with Beth Morrison Projects. Founded in 2013, PROTOTYPE commissions, develops, produces, and presents new 21st century works of contemporary opera and music-theater.

Since its founding in 1993, HERE and the artists it has supported have received 18 Obies, 2 Bessies, 5 Drama Desk Nominations, 2 Pulitzer Prizes, 4 Doris Duke Awards, and 2 MacArthur Fellowships. 

About Opera on Tap

Opera on Tap (OOT) is a women-led organization that was born in 2005 at Freddy’s Bar and Backroom in Brooklyn and incorporated in 2006 to promote opera as a viable, living and progressive art form and to support the developing artists who continue to keep the art form alive. What began as a small monthly gathering of ambitious, classically trained singers looking for more performance opportunities, has grown into a producing organization that has gained a loyal audience base and national recognition as an innovative force on the classical music scene. Through its Chapter program, which now has twenty-five vibrant national (and international) chapters, OOT has created a large network of performers, creators, and supporters.  Headquartered as a national organization in Brooklyn, OOT presents a variety of programs intended to adhere to their mission of community engagement through opera. The Immersive Opera Project (IOP) is their commissioning/development/full production program through which Looking at You is produced. IOP is spearheaded by Opera on Tap and presented in collaboration with regional opera companies across the globe to develop and showcase new immersive works of opera utilizing immersive technologies (VR/AR/MR/XR), and also inclusive of live immersive and site-specific opera performance. IOP evolved out of OOT's full production program Roadworks, which originated in 2012 and has recently been inspired by the success of their production of the world's first virtual reality (VR) opera, The Parksville Murders, composed by Kamala Sankaram with libretto by Jerre Dye. In addition to receiving critical accolades, the opera has been seen by close to 40,000 people in VR headset.

About Experiments in Opera

Co-Founded in Brooklyn in 2010 by composers Aaron Siegel, Matthew Welch and Jason Cady, Experiments in Opera is focused on re-writing the story of opera with the belief that new operas can be adventurous and fun, focused on strong and intimate storytelling, while also challenging notions of what experimental music can be.

Since its founding, Experiments in Opera has commissioned 75 new works in seven years, from 47 composers collaborating with over four hundred performers, designers and directors from the New York City artists community.  During that time, they have produced events at Roulette, National Sawdust and Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, as well as at The Flea Theater, Symphony Space, Merkin Concert Hall, The Stone, Le Poisson Rouge, Anthology Film Archives and Abrons Arts Center in Manhattan.  In fall 2018, Kamala Sankaram joined Experiments in Opera as co-artistic director.

Past work presented has included compositions from Jason Cady, Aaron Siegel, Matthew Welch, Roddy Bottom, Gelsey Bell, Georges Aperghis, Robert Ashley, Andrew Raffo Dewar, Joe Diebes, Natacha Diels, Lainie Fefferman, Miguel Frasconi, Anne Guthrie, James Ilgenfritz, John King, Daniel Kushner, Ruby Fulton, Gabrielle Herbst, Nick Hallett, Travis Just, Mary Kouyoumdjian, Joan La Barbara, Lukas Ligeti, Charlie Looker, Cristina Lord, Emily Manzo, Paula Matthusen, Anna Mikailhova, Jonathan Mitchell, Nicole Murphy, Jascha Narveson, Pauline Oliveros, Jessica Pavone, Paul Pinto, Erin Rogers, Dave Ruder, Kamala Sankaram, Elliott Sharp, JG Thirlwell, Justin Tierney, Leaha Maria Villarreal, Dorian Wallace, Washington, Katie Young, John Zorn and the Cough Button collective.

Funding Credits

Looking at You is made possible through the generous support of Carnegie Mellon University; KSF; Mental Insight Foundation; New England Foundation for the Arts; Opera America; Puffin Foundation; and the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Developmental support provided by American Lyric Theatre; Anti-Social Music; BRIC Lab; The Civilians R&D Group; Mana Contemporary, and Todd Mountain Theatre Project. In-kind support provided by Alessandro Acquisti, Ralph Gross, Joe Holt, and Daniel Dickison.

###