Past and present Work

Ridge Theater

Recent Shows

Our productions have been presented at venues including The American Repertory Theater, BAM, Carnegie Hall, La MaMa E.T.C., Lincoln Center, Royal Festival Hall, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Verizon Hall, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts.
Fantini Futuro
“The Journey Of The Trumpet, From Outdoors, To Indoors, To Virtual Reality”

Fantini Futuro is an electronic opera by Ben Neill for the Mutantrumpet, his self-designed electro-acoustic instrument, countertenor, Baroque keyboards, and interactive video projections. The immersive piece is based on the music and life of early Baroque trumpeter/composer Girolamo Fantini, who was responsible for bringing the trumpet indoors from the hunt and the battlefield to the realm of art music. Using an array of interactive technologies, Fantini is depicted as a traveler through space and time by a synthesis of early music, minimalism, and digital media performance. Fantini’s translocation of the trumpet from outside to inside is mirrored and reimagined by Neill’s Mutantrumpet, which extends the acoustic instrument into the virtual realm.

Fantini Futuro Composed by Ben Neill. Featuring Ben Neill, Ryland Angel and Gwendolyn Toth. Directed by Bob McGrath. Keyboards are played by ARTEK Director Gwendolyn Toth, who is recognized as one of America’s leading performers on early keyboard instruments. Fantini Futuro was awarded a New York State Council on the Arts grant in Film and New Media in 2022. A 2020 demonstration video of the Mutantrumpet V4 which made its debut in Fantini Futuro received over 800,000 views on social media and was shared thousands of times.

St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral NYC, Roulette, Brooklyn and Ramapo College

Fantini Futuro transforms Fantini’s material both compositionally and in real time during the performance. The work draws connections between early Baroque musical and architectural vocabularies and minimalist patterns and processes, reinterpreting them through current techniques of live sampling, spatialization, and interactive visual media. The improvisatory quality of the piece references the original performance practice of music in Fantini’s era. Italian texts are taken from poems written in tribute to Fantini. The visual component is comprised of architectural imagery and artworks from places where Fantini lived and performed. Animated images are controlled live from the Mutantrumpet, situating the performers in virtual sets created from the historical elements. Fantini Futuro is directed by three-time Obie award winning director Bob McGrath.
Companionship
“Treading Water On The Distant Seas. Most People Never Make It Back To Shore.”

Companionship tells the story of an aspiring baker who finally reaches the end of her obsessive quest to bake the perfect baguette when the 207,345th one suddenly comes to life.
Adapted from the short story by Arthur Phillips by composer/librettist Rachel J. Peters.

Companionship Music and Libretto by Rachel J. Peters. Musical Direction by Alan Johnson. Stage Direction by Bob McGrath. Projection Design by Laurie Olinder. Associate Projection Design and Programming by Simon Harding. Costume Design by Summer Lee Jack. Lighting Design by Jason Amato. Accompanist/Cover Conductor Geoffrey Loff. Accompanist Shelby Rhoades. Orchestra Contractor James Nesbit. Technical Direction by David Latham. Production Manager/Stage Manager Karen Oberthal. Assistant Stage Manager Holden Seward.
Companionship
Maren Weinberger Maddry Leslie Sinclair, Kate Tombaugh The Dough, David A Small Gene Sinclair, La’Shelle Allen Judy Sinclair, Sequina DuBose Viv Sinclair, Robert Osborne The Dough’s Mate, Kevin Gwinn Tom, Abigail Bodvake, Elie Brodine, Kira Cervi, Jolie Ragin, Mads Poole, Logan Windley The Loaves/Chorus

Attucks Theater, Virginia Arts Festival

Inherent Resolve
“Keeping Secrets Sucks”

A squad of Afghanistan veterans are brought back together in a bid to support their former officer’s political campaign. With tensions rising, and the past ever present, the dark truth of their famed mission comes to life and the traumas of their deployment are laid bare.

Inherent Resolve Written by Richard Wesley, Directed by Bob McGrath, Projections by Kristen Morgan, Music and Sound by Joseph Budenholzer, Set Design by Nadja Antic, Costume Design by Brynne Oster-Bainnson, Lighting Design by Christopher Wong.
Inherent Resolve Ridge Theater and Bob McGrath are honored to have worked with the NYU Tisch Grad Acting Program. Playwright and professor Richard Wesley crafted a new story from the ground up with a group of extraordinarily talented actors and designers. Ridge prides itself on working with up and coming artists from all backgrounds and “Inherent Resolve” is a testament to the abilities of everyone involved.

New York University, Shubert Theater

Lulu
“She’s Not My Precious Doll Anymore”

Lulu is an opera inspired by Frank Wedekind’s tragic masterpiece. Through multimedia we create a hallucinogenic, contorted Expressionist world. Human desire is a mystery, a Pandora’s Box, that this opera unlocks.

Lulu Written by Joseph Budenholzer, Jennifer Charles, Maluca Mala, and Bob McGrath. Music by Joseph Budenholzer, Jennifer Charles, and Oren Bloedow. Directed by Bob McGrath. Featuring Jennifer Charles, Hai-Ting Chinn, John Dossett, Jordan Goldston, and Emmitt George. Projection Design Dylan James Amick. Titles by Kristen Morgan. Dramaturgy/Video by Donald Campbell.

ECSU Proscenium Theatre

Anatomy Theater
“Where Is Evil?”

Part multimedia opera, part conceptual art, Anatomy Theatre is an installation that conjures a time in pre-modern Europe when “Specialists” traveled from town to town, dissecting the corpses of executed criminals to seek evidence of corruption in the interior of the human body.

A joyous, grisly theatrical event by Pulitzer Prize winning composer David Lang, and world renowned conceptual artist Mark Dion.

Anatomy Theater Music by David Lang. Libretto by Mark Dion & David Lang. Directed by Bob McGrath. Film by Bill Morrison. Projections by Laurie Olinder. Produced by Beth Morrison BMP.
LA Opera and BRIC In Brooklyn
Reviews:
The New York Times
Los Angeles Times
The Wall Street Journal
New Music USA
The Demo
“We Have A Pointing Device Called A Mouse.”

The Demo is based on Douglas Engelbart’s historic 1968 demonstration of early computer technology. Engelbart is the most influential figure in the early history of computers and the Internet, inventing what we now take for granted; videoconferencing, hyperlinks, networked collaboration, digital text editing and something called a mouse. The Demo reimagines Engelbart’s historic demonstration as a technologically infused hybrid performance using the video of the original 1968 demo.

The Demo Composed by Ben Neill and Mikel Rouse. Directed by Bob McGrath. Set and Projections by Jim Findlay and Jeff Sugg. Produced by ArKtype/Thomas O. Kriegsmann in collaboration with Ridge Theater.

Stanford Live and The Krannert Center For The Performing Arts

The Rite of Spring
“The Mystery And Great Surge Of The Creative Power Of Spring.”
—Igor Stravinsky

Ridge Theater reimagines this classic modernist ballet as a multi-media ode to the brutality of winter and the glorious sacrifice that blooms in spring.

The Rite Of Spring
Music by Igor Stravinsky. Performed by The Philadelphia Orchestra. Conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Directed by Bob McGrath. Choreography by Dan Safer. Film by Bill Morrison. Projections by Laurie Olinder. Set by Jim Findlay.

Verizon Hall, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

Reviews:
The Philadelphia Inquirer

Suddenly Last Summer
“Truth Is The Bottom Of A Bottomless Well.”

A Southern Gothic tale that centers on a young woman about to receive a lobotomy to cut out the memory of witnessing the death of her cousin while traveling with him in Spain the previous summer.

Suddenly Last Summer Written by Tennessee Williams. Directed by Bob McGrath. Projections by Laurie Olinder.

Virginia Tech Haymarket Theatre

Woyzeck
“I Dreamed About Killing You Again Last Night…”

Award-winning playwright Neil LaBute creates a fresh adaptation of Georg Buchner’s classic work. An investigation of desire, exploitation and madness, LaBute’s Woyzeck brings a new fire to this canonical tale.

Woyzeck Directed by Bob McGrath. Music by David Lang. Featuring Michael Harris.

Main Theater, UC Davis.

Persephone
“I Am Tired Of Tears And Laughter, And Men That Laugh And Weep.”

The Greek myth of Persephone is presented as a nineteenth-century theatrical experience, immersed in the colors of the Hudson River School, then transported through a dense wave of cutting-edge musical and visual technology.

“Persephone, a multimedia production from the Ridge Theater at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, presents a lush feast of imagery for the eye to savor. At its bewitching best, the production evokes a French Neo-Classical painting that has magically bloomed into three dimensions.”
—Charles Isherwood,
The New York Times

Persephone A collaboration by Ben Neill, Mimi Goese, Warren Leight, and Ridge Theater. Directed by Bob McGrath. Music by Ben Neil. Lyrics by Mimi Goese. Book by Warren Leight. Films by Bill Morrison. Projections by Laurie Olinder. Featuring Julia Stiles as Persephone, and Mimi Goese as Demeter. Sets by Jim Findlay. Choreography by Dan Safer. Lighting Design by John Ambrosone. Costumes by Jane Alois Stein.

Co-commissioned by BAM Next Wave Festival, and VA Tech.

Reviews:
Variety

Shelter
“Is The Wind At My Back? Do I Face The Sun? Can I See My Enemy?”

A theatrical concert with projections. Evokes the power and threat of nature, the soaring frontier promise contained in the framing of a new house, the pure aesthetic beauty of blueprints, the sweet architecture of sound, and the uneasy vulnerability that underlies even the safety of our sleep.

Shelter Music composed by Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe. Libretto by Deborah Artman. Film by Bill Morrison. Projections by Laurie Olinder. Performed by musikFabrik. Performed by Trio Mediæval. Directed by Bob McGrath.

Brooklyn Academy of Music, Next Wave Festival

Ultima | Oslo Contemporary Music Festival

Norske Teatret

Funkhaus Wallrafplatz, Klaus-von-Bismarck Saal, Cologne, Germany

Philharmonie Essen, Alfried Krupp Saal, Essen, Germany

The Carbon Copy Building
“Cherry Cheese Cake, Cherry Cherry Cheese Cake.”

A Comic Book Opera.

OBIE Winner—Best New American Production.

Multimedia music theater with words and drawings by Ben Katchor. Based on his dialectical comic strip about two buildings with the same footprint in different parts of Manhattan.

The Carbon Copy Building Words and Drawings by Ben Katchor. Music Composed by Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe. Directed by Bob McGrath. Set Design by Fred Tietz. Lighting Design by Howard Thies. Costume Design by Rachel Comey. Film by Bill Morrison. Projection Design by Laurie Olinder. Dramaturgy by Daniel Zippi. Sung by Theo Bleckmann, Tony Boutté, Katie Geissinger, and Toby Twining.

Executive Producer Kenny Savelson. Co-Produced by The Kitchen and Bang On A Can.

Commissioned by the Settembre Music Festival, Italy.

Teatro Stabile di Torino, Turin, Italy

The Kitchen, NYC

Royal Court Liverpool

Mass MoCA

Kampnagel, Hamburg, Germany

Decasia Live
“The State Of Decay”

An environmental symphony where the audience is surrounded by the orchestra and projections.

The piece is a meditation on old, decaying silent films, featuring segments of earlier movies re-edited and integrated into a new narrative.

Decasia Live Symphony by Michael Gordon. Film by Bill Morrison. Projections by Laurie Olinder. Set by Jim Findlay. Staged by Bob McGrath.

World Premiere, European Music Month, Basel, Switzerland. Performed by the Basel Sinfonietta. Conducted by Kasper de Roos.

Commissioned and Presented by Europäischer Musikmonat

American Premiere, St. Ann‘s Warehouse
Produced by Susan Feldman for Arts at St. Ann‘s

Live at Angel Orensanz

Reviews:
The New Yorker
The New York Times