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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.
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