In this modern retelling of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, a woman is cloistered in a prison of her own making until a mysterious stranger shows her a way out.

Featuring Mozart’s Exsultate, Jubilate (KV 165) and new music by Iranian-Canadian composer Iman Habibi with original Latin text, “Obscura Nox” is a combination of classical music and narrative film. This 26-minute “création lyrique” explores themes of isolation, the relationship between perception and reality, and society’s morphine-drip addiction to our screens. 

Produced by: Julia Dawson & Alexander Brusencev
Starring: Julia Dawson, Evie Poiros, and others
Choreographed by: Claudia Schreier
Designed by: Grace Laubacher and Sara Jean Tosetti
Cinematography by: Thilo Jaeger
Directed by: Mary Birnbaum

The struggle between finding connection with each other and settling for having material stuff instead, conveyed with comedy and drama punctuated by mercurial moments of openness. Using a poem by Phillis Levin as a kind of ground base, the fight escalates as we loop through the poem, with theft and embarrassment accumulating in each iteration. While the work was originally created for live, staged performance, the pandemic provided an opportunity: Ariadne Greif proposed creating a composite music video in which she performs both parts. The video format allows her to draw the two characters closer to each other and position them as two sides of the same mind.

Commissioned by: Ariadne Greif,
with funding from the Queens Council on the Arts New Works Grants.
Phillis Levin wrote the poem ‘Table Manners,’ used here with permission.

Ariadne Greif…..Alpha and Beta
Funny Hands…..Ashely Everhart
Director: Mary Birnbaum
Art Director and Costumer Designer: Johnny Vendiola
Hair and Makeup Artist: José André Sibaja
Composer: Sheree Clement
Video Editor: Ariadne Greif
Cinematography by: Caroline Mariko Stucky
Produced by: Sheree Clement

Two Jewish women in New York, one says, “Do you see what's going on in Poland?” 
The other says "I live in the back, I don't see anything." – Henny Youngman 

Inside 88 west 66th street, someone has stolen disinfectant wipes from the basement. Follow
concierge Sofia as she snoops on the residents to find out who did the dirty deed (and who is using the wipes to cover their tracks!).

Inspired by Rear Window and a long stare-off with a neighbor through our respective windows one Tuesday afternoon, APART/MENTAL grew out of composer Ken Steen, writer Mary Birnbaum, and director Anna Pool’s discussions of the people we unknowingly share our lives with and the secrets they may hold.

When visual artist Jojo Karlin sent Mary wry and whimsically crafted paper dolls of each character, our puppet opera concept was born: a remedy for how to film a cast who live across the world, from Hong Kong to Peru.

Within Ken Steen’s imaginative, foley-infused score, ensconcing each apartment in their own unique sound world, APART/MENTAL asks: what leads to trust in a community? What incentive do we have to take care of each other? Oh, and how many times can you disinfect a doorknob?

Composer: Ken Steen
Co-Director/Writer/Puppeteer: Mary Birnbaum
Co-Director/Dramaturge: Anna Pool
Scenic Design & Puppet Maker: Jojo Karlin

Faced with an unprecedented quarantine, two students return home to their elderly parents. Very different products of millenial Britain, Jon is ripped from his medical studies and Steph is plunged back into fraught family life. As each struggle with the confines of Covid-19, their impressions and views on life gradually alter through their fragile friendship.

In THRESHOLD, two strangers, thrown together by unusual circumstances, find themselves faced with challenges and questions that begin to re-shape their views and lives. Similarly, the four creatives drawn together by Opera Harmony’s lynchpin Ella Marchmont, were faced with some unprecedented questions: how would we film this concept with actors in different countries? Could we successfully capture the rich vibrancy of opera through the available technology?  Taking Zoe Vail’s spoken-word edged libretto, singer and composer James Schouten set about creating a dynamic, rock-influenced sound, that would capture the turbulent emotional landscape of the young leads. Director Mary Birnbaum’s unwavering positivity for the creative task at hand ensured the project kept on track despite some very real world challenges along the way that saw Kady Evanyshyn stuck in Germany until the last minute, returning to her native Canada to complete recording and James Schouten moving house. Intrigued by lockdown’s interruption in our lives and the feared, enforced isolation it commanded, THRESHOLD focuses on the tense gulf between our virtual identities and our real world selves.
 

Steph…..Kady Evanyshyn
Jon…..James Schouten

Composer: James Schouten
Libretto: Zoe Vail
Director/Editor: Mary Birnbaum
Filmed by: Katherine Schouten and Andrew Evanyshyn