Join PROTOTYPE, National Sawdust, and OperaWire for a special festival preview celebrating the launch of the PROTOTYPE 2027 and the visionary artists, stories, and performances shaping this year’s lineup. Hosted at National Sawdust, this season preview will give audiences a first glimpse of the bold new works featured in this year’s festival. The evening will feature intimate performances and conversations with the composers, performers, and creative teams shaping the season’s most exciting projects—sharing the inspirations, processes, and stories behind their work.
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Featuring performances from:
Plus conversations and preview presentations highlighting every production in the 2027 PROTOTYPE Festival, with appearances from artists across the full season.
The program will be moderated by PROTOTYPE Artistic Director and Co-Founder, Beth Morrison, alongside Jennifer Pyron, Managing Editor for OperaWire, who will lead a lively discussion with festival artists and creators.
Presented in partnership with National Sawdust and OperaWire, this event kicks off the 2027 festival season and celebrates the artists redefining the future of opera.
PROTOTYPE is produced by Beth Morrison Projects, a trailblazer in the creation and presentation of contemporary, multi-disciplinary opera-theatre and music-theatre works. The visionary festival is the only one of its kind in New York City and around the country – producing and presenting a wide spectrum of works, from intimate black-box experiences to larger chamber opera productions, valuing artistic, curatorial, and producorial risk-taking.
PROTOTYPE is committed to surprising our audiences and confounding their expectations through content, form, and relevance. The festival gives voice to a diverse group of composers, librettists, performers and musicians across all genres, backgrounds, and cultures. In providing a recurring showcase of visionary opera-theatre and music-theatre pieces, the touring life of the work extends around the world. The festival also presents groundbreaking new works by international artists and has become a global reference of artistic excellence in the field of opera and music-theatre.
PROTOTYPE was co-founded in 2013 by Beth Morrison Projects and HERE under the leadership of Beth Morrison, Kristin Marting, and Kim Whitener.
This is a seated performance. If you require accessibility accommodations, please email boxoffice@nationalsawdust.org
ABOUT BETH MORRISON
A three time Grammy-nominated producer, recipient of the Musical America Award for Artist of the Year/Agent of Change and a Kennedy Center 50NEXT Honoree, Beth Morrison is an opera-theatre producer and the President and Creative Producer of Beth Morrison Projects and the co-Founding Director of PROTOTYPE: Opera/ Theatre/ Now Festival. Morrison is noted as a “contemporary opera mastermind” (LA Times) and “a powerhouse leading the industry to new heights” (WQXR). Beth created Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) in 2006 to identify and support the work of emerging and established living composers, and to change the opera industry by cultivating a new generation of talent and telling the stories of our time. BMP has commissioned, developed, produced and toured over 65 works in 19 countries around the world, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning chamber operas Angel’s Bone (Du Yun/ Royce Vavrek) and p r i s m (Ellen Reid/Roxie Perkins). Opera News has noted, “More than any other figure in the opera industry, Beth Morrison has helped propel the art form into the twenty-first century." In 2013, Beth co-founded the PROTOTYPE Festival for which she serves as Artist Director, which has become “essential to the evolution of American opera” (New Yorker). Morrison is also in demand as a speaker both nationally and internationally and has delivered key note speeches for Classical:Next, Opera America, Opera Europa, Mannes School of Music/ The New School, among others. Morrison holds a Bachelor of Music from Boston University, a Master of Music from Arizona State University, and an MFA from Yale School of Drama. Beth is also a Lecturer at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University.
ABOUT JENNIFER PYRON
Jennifer Pyron is the Managing Editor and a writer for OperaWire since 2017. She is also a member of the Music Critics Association of North America and Music Theory Society of New York State. Her work covers a wide range of opera performances and festivals in NYC and Europe, including Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival, Beth Morrison Projects PROTOTYPE Festival, Brooklyn Art Song Society, Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, Columbia University, Death of Classical (NYC), Glyndebourne Opera Festival (U.K.), Göteborg Opera (Sweden), Guggenheim Museum’s Works & Process Series (NYC), Innsbruck Early Music Festival (Austria), Japan Society, La Mama, Les Talens Lyriques Orchestra, Lincoln Center Theater, Macerata Opera Festival (Sferisterio Arena, Italy), Manhattan School of Music, Metropolitan Opera, MetLiveArts, Monteverdi Festival (Italy), National Sawdust, Orange Mountain Music (Philip Glass works), Pietrasanta in Concerto (Italy), Roulette Intermedium (Robert Ashley works), Santa Fe Opera, Sofia Opera & Ballet (Bulgaria), Teatro alla Scala, Teatro La Fenice, The Frick Collection (NYC), The Grange Festival (U.K.), The Juilliard School, United Nations (NYC), Versailles Royal Opera Orchestra, and the Whitney Museum.