Persona, a new chamber opera based on Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 classic film, composed by Keeril Makan, with direction and libretto by Jay Scheib, previewed at MIT in a sold-out workshop performance on October 17 as part of MIT Sounding 2015-16. Rome Prize winner Makan and Obie-award winner Scheib — both MIT faculty — audaciously transplant Persona’s famously provocative and complex depiction of human frailty, cruelty and identity into operatic form. The work premieres at National Sawdust in Brooklyn on Oct. 23.
Persona (World Premiere)
Libretto by Jay Scheib after the film by Ingmar Bergman
Directed by Jay Scheib
Music Direction by Evan Ziporyn
with
Amanda Crider as ALMA
Lacey Dorn as ELISABET
Eve Gigliotti as DOCTOR
Joshua Jeremiah as MAN
Production Manager and Production Stage Manager Lindsey Turteltaub
Beth Morrison Projects (National Sawdust group-in-residence) is the producer of this new work, which it co-commissioned with the venue. Composed by Rome Prize-winner Keeril Makan, with music direction by Evan Ziporyn and a libretto and direction by Jay Scheib, one of American Theater’s “Top 25 Directors Likely to Shape American Performance Over the Next 25 Years,” Persona is a provocative, highly cerebral, and artistically complex depiction of human frailty, cruelty, and identity.
About Keeril Makan
Keeril Makan, Associate Professor of Music. Described by The New Yorker as “an arrestingly gifted young American composer,” and by The New York Times as “consistently stimulating,” The Boston Globe portrays Keeril Makan as a composer “whose music deserves to be more widely heard.” Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Luciano Berio Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, he has also received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Howard Foundation, the Fromm Foundation, Meet the Composer, the Aaron Copland House, the Utah Arts Festival, the Fulbright Program, and ASCAP. His work has been commissioned by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, American Composers Orchestra, Harvard Musical Association, and Carnegie Hall, among others.
His CDs, In Sound (Tzadik), Target (Starkland), and Afterglow (Mode) include performances by the Kronos Quartet, Either/Or, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. Persona, his opera, written for Alarm Will Sound and produced by Beth Morrison, is an adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s classic film, with a libretto by Jay Scheib. Schott is publishing his compositions. Makan was raised in New Jersey by parents of South African Indian and Russian Jewish descent. After training as a violinist, he received degrees in composition and religion from Oberlin and completed his PhD in composition at the University of California–Berkeley, with additional studies in Helsinki and Paris.
About Jay Scheib
Jay Scheib is Internationally known for genre-defying works of daring physicality and the integration of new (and used) technologies in live performance. Scheib’s staging of Thomas Adès’ opera “Powder her Face” was the season opener for the final season of New York City Opera at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). Called “dazzling,” by Anthony Tommasini in the New York Times, “Powder her Face” went on to play Festival d’Opéra de Québec in Canada. As a frequent director of operas and works for music theater Scheib staged Evan Ziporyn’s “A House in Bali,” as part of BAM’s Next Wave Festival 2010; Beethoven’s “Fidelio” at the Saarländisches Staatstheater; and an original collaboration with punk band World Inferno titled “Addicted to Bad Ideas,” and toured eight cities internationally. Named Best New York Theater Director by Time Out New York in 2009, and one of the 25 theater artists shaping the next 25 years of American theater, by American Theater Magazine, Scheib is a recipient of the MIT Edgerton Award, The Richard Sherwood Award, a National Endowment for the Arts/TCG fellowship, an OBIE Award for Best Direction and the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. He is a Professor for Music and Theater Arts at MIT where he directs the Program in Theater Arts.
