MUSIC BY Kat Cartusciello
LIBRETTO BY Casey Llewellyn

LILY ZHANG — Gileann Tan
HA-EUN SEOK — Yoojin Lee
BEN FARRINGTON — John Bellemer

Music Direction - Dmitriy Glivinskiy
Stage Direction - Diego Alejandro González

Three collaborators at a community theater in a public housing complex grapple with changes in themselves, their relationships, and the liberatory possibilities of theater in the wake of illness and the impending development of the complex by a private developer.

muckrakers

Music by ernie bird
libretto by sam norman

SVITLANA — Gileann Tan
MR BARTELBY — John Bellemer
ANDRIY — Eliam Ramos

Music Direction - Dmitriy Glivinskiy
Stage Direction - Diego Alejandro González

A pair of refugees. An irritable customs official. An interrogation that goes off the rails. Set on Ellis Island in 1900, Muckrakers probes the question of what can be lost (or found) in translation.

the hands that planted

Music by benjamin walton
Libretto by zoe ray prawda

LAUREL — Gileann Tan
RIVER — Yoojin Lee
AARON — Eliam Ramos

Music Direction by Dmitriy Glivinskiy
Stage Direction by Dennis Yueh-Yeh Li

Three members of a community share what they think should be done with their beloved tree which is overrun with ivy.

untitled

Music by Phyto stratis
Libretto by yunhye park

MUSE — Gileann Tan
Paulin — Yoojin Lee
Bernard — Eliam Ramos

Music Direction by Dmitriy Glivinskiy
Stage Direction by Dennis Yueh-Yeh Li

Bernard, an old retired sailor, starts painting even though he has never believed that he could be a painter.

third louise of the gallery

Music by michael meketa SANCHEZ
Libretto by sravya saraswatula

LOUISE— Yoojin Lee
ERIC — John Bellemer
SERVICE MAN — Eliam Ramos

Music Direction by Dmitriy Glivinskiy
Stage Direction by Diego Alejandro González

The Hudson Gallery in the Elliott Center, Chelsea until now has had two Louises in their art shows and Louise Lee is really eager to join this line-up. Louise Lee and her long-term husband, Eric, live in the senior housing in the Elliott. However, the senior center has been marked for re-construction in a month to include the more privileged. The myth has it that all Louise's of the gallery are bound for tragically grand endings.

LIFT

Music by stephen anthony elkins
Libretto by adrien radke

PR REPRESENTATIVE — Yoojin Lee
HOUSING AGENT — John Bellemer
ELIJAH — Eliam Ramos

Music Direction by Dmitriy Glivinskiy
Stage Direction by Dennis Yueh-Yeh Li

The Hudson Guild's empathy is unmistakable. Rooted in service for underserved communities, The Guild is a community that acts to shape a better world. Goodness for goodness' sake. The piece serves as a condemnation of modern "solutions" to accessible housing. Housing lottery systems offer accessibility warped with political or financial gain. Goodness done for gain's sake, and those who suffer from unkind acts of kindness.

CHIPS!

Music by Ziyan Yang
Libretto by alecia baxter

MARTINA — Natalie Choo
Mr. Thibadeaux — Clayton G. Williams
BRAYDON — Lucas Bouk

Music Direction by Chérie Roe
Stage Direction by Michelle Chan

It's 2074 and not much has changed at the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses. Yup, everything is relatively the same. Well, except for the fact that the proverbial 'chips on people's shoulders' now literally grow out of their shoulders. Oh, and some people get to live in a space station during building renovations.

WINDY
Music by michael light oosterhout
Libretto by alex manaa

WINDY 9 — Natalie Choo
WINDY 40 — Brittany Fowler
WINDY 70 — Clayton G. Williams

Music Direction by Chérie Roe
Stage Direction by Sam Helfrich

Windy is a piece following a woman of the same name through three stages of her life, all in the same apartment complex in Chelsea, New York. Through the years we see her relationship with her neighbors and community shift in an increasingly individualistic society, as well as the chance of building something new.

TO rend a dream

Music by Bo john carroll
Libretto by ben ginsberg

SHANNON — Natalie Choo
HARPER — Brittany Fowler

Music Direction by Chérie Roe
Stage Direction by Michelle Chan

"To Rend a Dream" is about two best friends of different class structures, having grown up together in the Elliott-Chelsea Housing Community, but who now have arrived at a crossroads. Their values come into conflict as one friend values the upward mobility of privilege while the other finds solace and purpose in the local settlement community.

it’s noon - do you know where your plants are?

Music by sequoia Sellinger
Libretto by grey

SUCCULENT — Brittany Fowler
CAT — Clayton G. Williams
POTHOS — Lucas Bouk

Music Direction by Chérie Roe
Stage Direction by Sam Helfrich

What if everything in your home could talk. Or at the very least what if your plants could? Your plants can hear you and they are judging the hell out of you. And naturally they are doing it as a group, and possibly with the other living but not human things in your house. The story follows a more traditional narrative structure with a beginning, middle, and end. Hijinks ensue.

Tesserae

MUSIC BY andy li
LIBRETTO BY patrick thompson

THE GRADUATE — Natalie Choo
THE TEACHER — Brittany Fowler
THE MOTHER — Clayton G. Williams

Music Direction by Chérie Roe
Stage Direction by Michelle Chan

At 420 W. 26th street, the dreams and hopes of young children are memorialized in colorful tiles that wrap around the building in a mosaic entitled, “I want to be a…” While looking over the neighborhood, a teacher, a mother, and high school graduate contemplate what it would mean to leave the mosaic and leave their home.

AGING GRACEFULLY (OR NOT)

MUSIC BY amos wong
LIBRETTO BY José Gabino Alba Rodríguez

CLARA CALVINO — Natalie Choo
ROSE MARIGOLD — Brittany Fowler
JASPER JUAREZ — Lucas Bouk

Music Direction by Chérie Roe
Stage Direction by Sam Helfrich

"Aging Gracefully (Or Not)" is a poignant opera that delves into the struggles of growing older, confronting mortality, and finding purpose in life's twilight. Through the intersecting lives of Jasper, Clara, and Rose—all in their 60s—this work explores the human desire for connection and belonging. Can Jasper find the courage to shed his insecurities and embrace life alongside his friends, or will the fear of aging and loss consume him?

Randall Eng founded and leads the NYU/Tisch Opera Lab with Sam Helfrich. Under their guidance, students from the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program have created more than 30 short operas. As a composer, Randall's music lies at the intersection of opera, music-theatre, and jazz. His operas Florida, Before the Night Sky, and Henry's Wife have been performed at UrbanArias, Lyric Opera Cleveland, New York City Opera's VOX Festival, American Opera Projects, Town Hall, the Virginia Arts Festival, the Center for Contemporary Opera, and Manhattan School of Music. His choral work Remain (a setting of an immigration rights pamphlet) premiered in 2018 by the MasterVoices Chorus. Other dramatic works include The Dangers of Electric Lighting (Luna Stage), Usher, Falling (Opera Vindaloo Festival), and the video opera The Woman in the Green Coat (Edinburgh Fringe Festival); non-theatrical works include commissions for Albany Symphony Orchestra's Dogs of Desire, Mirror Visions Ensemble, and Composer's Voice. Randall is a graduate of Harvard University, Cambridge University, and NYU/Tisch's Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program, where he is now an Associate Arts Professor.

Sam Helfrich BA (Russian Literature), M.F.A. (Theatre Arts) Columbia University. Sam Helfrich is an opera and theater director based in New York. He has directed opera productions at New York City Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Portland Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Spoleto Festival/USA, Virginia Opera, Opera Boston, Pittsburgh Opera, and Wolf Trap, among others. Recent opera highlights include the west coast premiere of Elizabeth Cree, by Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell, at West Edge Opera, the world premiere of Permadeath, a CGI- based opera about video gaming with White Snake Productions in Boston, the world premiere of Jeffrey Smith's Why is Eartha Kitt Trying to Kill Me at Urban Arias in Washington DC, Mozart’s The Magic Flute with the Indianapolis Symphony, a staging of Haydn’s Creation with the Pittsburgh Symphony, the New York premiere of Angels in America at New York City Opera, the world premiere of Dan Sonenberg's The Summer King at Pittsburgh Opera (and, recently, at Michigan Opera Theater),  Bach's St. John Passion with the Pittsburgh Symphony, Mark Anthony Turnage's Greek at Boston Lyric Opera, Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld at Virginia Opera, the world premiere of Enemies: A Love Story, by Ben Moore, at Palm Beach Opera, Embedded, by composer Patrick Soluri, at Fargo-Moorhead Opera and Ft. Worth Opera, Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos at Virginia Opera, Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking at Eugene Opera, Andre Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire at Virginia Opera, the American premiere of Philip Glass' Kepler at Spoleto Festival/USA, Adams' Nixon in China at Eugene Opera, a fully staged Messiah with the Pittsburgh Symphony, the world premiere of Michael Dellaira's The Secret Agent at Center for Contemporary Opera in New York, the Armel Opera Festival in Hungary, and Opera Avignon, The Turn of the Screw at Boston Lyric Opera, Philip Glass' Orphée at Pittsburgh Opera, Virginia Opera, Portland Opera, and Glimmerglass Opera, and Anthony Davis’ Amistad at Spoleto Festival/USA. Recent theater credits include Neil LaBute’s In a Dark Dark House with Knife Edge Productions, off-Broadway productions of Owned, a world premier play by Julian Sheppard, and Tape, by Stephen Belber, a double bill of plays by Shaw and De Musset at the Franklin Stage Company, and Arthur Miller’s After The Fall at NYU/Tisch Grad Acting.

TJ Rubin (Production Manager) is a composer and music educator who tells stories onstage that reflect the wide variety of queer experiences and narratives the world holds. TJ’s music lives at the intersection of opera and musical theater, with melodies that are “torquing, and probing, quizzical and wonderstruck” (San Francisco Classical Voice). Recent works include Ten Minutes in the Life or Death of… (libretto by Marella Martin Koch), How To Create A Young Girl (book and lyrics by Laura Barati), Back to the Shore: A Jersey Short Opera (libretto by Mika Kauffman) and Nightlife (libretto by Deepali Gupta), which premiered at the Stonewall Inn as part of a collaboration between NYU and AOP for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. He is on faculty at Montclair State University and William Paterson University. He is also a composer in the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop. MFA: New York University, Musical Theatre Writing.