Ridge Theater

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 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
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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.