Organization

Stage director

Kristin Marting

Conductor

Mila Henry

Pianist

Singer

Justine Aronson

No role specified

Christian Mark Gibbs

Amy Justman

Tesia Kwarteng

Levin Valayil

Caleb Wright

American Opera Project

Concert preview

New York City

United States

Public

Eat the Document

Approved

Eat the document : John Glover: Concert

Discover the new opera EAT THE DOCUMENT

CREATIVE TEAM:
John Glover ￨Composer
Kelley Rourke ￨Librettist
Kristin Marting ￨Director
Dana Spiotta￨Author

FEATURED DEVELOPMENT ARTISTS:
Justine Aronson, Catherine Brookman, Mila Henry, Britt Hewitt,
Amy Justman, Paul Pinto, Tim Russell, Jonathan Woody

AOP Workshop Footage Video: The Center for Fiction, Matt Gray

MUSIC:
“Coke” from Eat the Document (Glover / Rourke)
Performed by Paul Pinto, Mila Henry. AOP, 2020

“Leave the Memory Behind” from Eat the Document (Glover / Rourke)
Performed by Justine Aronson, Mila Henry, Amy Justman. AOP, 2020

AOP new opera development is made possible through the support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Howard Gilman Foundation, The Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation and many individual donors.

AOP “Stage Notes” videos made possible through the support of The Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation

Eat the Document is a thrilling new music-theater work by John Glover and Kelley Rourke, developed with and directed by Kristin Marting, and presented by Amanda+James and AOP.

Concert preview of the work-in-development

Based on a bold and moving novel about a fugitive radical from the 1970s who has lived in hiding for twenty-five years, Eat the Document is a story of activism, sacrifice, and the cost of living a secret.

In the heyday of the seventies underground, Bobby DeSoto and Mary Whittaker – passionate, idealistic, and in love – designed a series of radical protests against the Vietnam War. When one action goes wrong, the course of their lives is forever changed. The two must erase their past, forge new identities, and never see one another again.

Now it is the 1990s. Mary lives in the suburbs with her fifteen-year-old son, Jason, who spends hours immersed in the music of his mother’s generation. She has no idea where Bobby is, whether he is alive or dead. A few towns away, an aging hippie called Nash presides over an anarchist bookstore, drawing the disaffected youth of the next generation into a shifting series of “groups” and “collectives.” Miranda, unlike some of her peers, takes Nash seriously, possibly more seriously than he takes himself.

Shifting between the protests in the 1970s and the consequences of those choices in the 1990s, Eat the Document explores the connection between the two eras — their language, technology, music, and activism.

The sound of 'ETD' draws from the voice-driven choral textures of the Beach Boys' 'Smile', the orchestral sweep of Joni Mitchell albums in the 70s, the psychedelic energy of George Clinton’s folk rock band Funkadelic, and alternative rock on 90s college and indie radio stations. All of this melds with singing actors and intricate musical textures invoking radio static and interference produced by close-mic'd acoustic guitar.

Character-driven and brilliant, Eat the Document is an important and revelatory story about the culture and consequence of rebellion, with particular resonance now.

English

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