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Event
Unfinished - Workshop Performance
A workshop presentation of scenes from Joshua Groffman and Sarah Heady's new opera, Unfinished.
Featuring Maggie Finnegan, soprano Danielle Messina, soprano Jennifer Panara, mezzo soprano Daniela Candillari, conductor Kelvin Chan, director
From the "Unfinished" project page:
Since its shuttering, the 22-acre Bennett campus, just outside the village, has stood abandoned. Decades of attempts to repurpose the site have failed; Halycon Hall has decayed beyond repair. In 2014, the property passed into the hands of local owners, who declared their intention to repurpose the grounds as a public park.
Unfinished undertakes to examine the legacy of Bennett College through the medium of opera. Using a mix of archival materials and contemporary testimony from Bennett alumnae and the Millbrook community, Unfinished explores how Bennett College is remembered, and forgotten, today.
Scenes from Unfinished will be performed in a workshop setting at Millbrooks Grace Episcopal Church. Produced by Vital Opera and directed by Kelvin Chan, the workshop will allow Millbrook residentsmany of whom have firsthand experience with both the pre-1977 living Bennett and its post-closure dramato react to the work-in-progress.
Grounded in this interactive workshop, Unfinished will grow out of the lived experience of the community around which it centers, providing us with rich documentary material as well an ethical underpinning to our creative process. It is our hope that the workshop will not only guide us toward a finished opera but facilitate dialogue in a community that, nearly forty years on, is still seeking closure for a critical piece of its history.
Our stance is not a nostalgic one. Rather, by engaging deeply with Bennett and Millbrook as they were, we hope to understand these places as they are today. Change is a constant; nothing (and nobody) is ever finished.
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LocationGrace Episcopal Church (Millbrook, NY) (View)
3328 Franklin Avenue
Millbrook, NY 12545
United States
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