Astronome: A Night At The Opera

This year, Richard Foreman, that shape-shifting shaman, teams up with the equally hard-to-pin-down composer, John Zorn for Astronome: A Night At The Opera. This is the historic first time collaboration for these two MacArthur geniuses who, individually, have challenged, enlightened and entertained adventurous audiences for years.

Film is not in the mix this time around but Foreman’s theater machine, with the inclusion of Zorn’s invigorating score continues to explore his favorite resource, the special electricity projected by raw human consciousness.

Astronome: A Night At The Opera is indeed an opera with Zorn’s recorded score dominated by ecstatic groans, grunts and babbling. Onstage we witness the initiation of a group of people into a world where ambiguous behavior alone leads to freedom–perhaps under the tutelage of the necessary "false messiah." The live cast, Karl Allen, Benjamin Forster, Eric Magnus, Fulya Peker, James Peterson, Morgan von Prelle Pecelli and Deborah Wallace inhabit Foreman’s colorful, picaresque set which resembles something out of an Architectural Digest from Hell.