Event

SWARM: A Microscopera

Everything you think you're not.

Do you find yourself lonely in crowds, but crowded in solitude? Is it the twitterverse that's causing you trouble, or your microbiome? Have you chased after the cool crowd, only to be deluged by it? Is it hard to be the person you want to be, when you're barely human? If this sounds like you, Swarm might be able to help. Fall in love with the way your bacteria talk to one another. Swarm. Because the internet is already inside you.

In Swarm, a woman makes a scientific breakthrough, discovering our bacteria are social, and a man moves to Brooklyn to be a part of the indie masses. They meet and love, their microbiomes mingle, their trajectories move them on. It's not their fault they are populated by 100 trillion microbes who are talking to one another, strung out across the planet in protocols, bits, and bars. Can she teach him to love the fact he's already a crowd? Probably not.

Inspired in part by the research of Bonnie Bassler, the "Bacteria Whisperer," Swarm is an experimental rock opera that brings together original music, documentary theater, visual projections, and light installations. It's a celebration of bacterial quorum sensing, a lamentation about Morgellon's disease, a musical musing about aspirational parasitosis, gentrification, the way the internet feels, and the fact that we're much less human than we'd like to believe.

Swarm will feature Michael Blain and Jules Ross on vocals, Randy Miller on guitar, Kristin Dombek on bass, Greg Gonzalez on synth, Dan Nicholson on cello, Mabis Chase on violin, and Svetlana Chirkova on drums.