Black Lodge

Composer: David Little
Librettist: Anne Waldman
Company: Opera Philadelphia

Synopsis

Story, Screenplay, and Film/Stage direction by Michael Joseph McQuilken
Starring TIMUR & JENNIFER HARRISON NEWMAN

Film Screening with Live Performance and Musicians

Trapped in a nightmarish Bardo, a place between death and rebirth, a tormented writer (Timur) faces down demons of his own making. Forced to confront his darkest moment in his life, he mines fractured and repressed memories for a way out. The woman (Jennifer Harrison Newman) 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. Inspired by the complicated mythology 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, and questions what it ultimately takes to face ourselves.

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 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.