Doing the Impossible:
Milwaukee Opera Theatre and Quasimondo Physical Theatre join forces to tell some opera stories "around the campfire."
by Paul Kosidowski
It started with a flood and a very old book.
In 2010, Jeffrey Mosser was helping clean up after a flood struck the offices of Boston's Huntington Theatre Company. Among his finds, a small hardcover book, title pages missing.
"I was so intrigued by it," Mosser tells me 13 years later over a Zoom call. He holds the well-weathered book up to the camera as if it was a family heirloom. "I carried it around with me in a suit pocket. But I had no idea what I was carrying around."
The title page and introduction were missing, but the book started with a summary of Rossini's The Barber of Seville. "I wondered if this was a cheat-sheet for opera-goers," he recalls. "This is for folks who might not grasp the language or feel like they are missing out on something. It makes it accessible for them."
Mosser came across the book years later after he had relocated to Chicago and began to think about how plays and operas can be "broken down" into a few sentences. "What would it take to do an opera in the shortest way possible, but still get the full story?" he recalled thinking. "That's impossible because opera is a time-based medium. It uses big, long stories and impossible things happen: sleep walking, avalanches, nymphs, monsters."
But here was this book, he thought, condensing these big stories into a few sentences. That's Impossible!
And Impossible Operas was born.
"When I moved to Milwaukee," he says, "I had an artistic blind date with Milwaukee Opera Theatre's Jill Anna Ponasik." They had not met before, but after getting to know him, Ponasik immediately asked, "What do you want to do? What's the project you want to work on?"
Enter, once again, The Book. "Here's what I've been thinking about," he told her.
"How do we make opera "smaller" so we don't have to see it in grand opera houses? What if we gathered around a campfire and told the story of an opera?"
Or, as it turns out, the real question was a little more ambitious: What if we told the stories of seven operas? And let's go "all-in" with the "impossible" idea, he told her. "What if we find operas that are huge and fantastical, ones that are truly "impossible" to do onstage, and let's do those."
The show uses the structure of Béla Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle, but instead of unveiling the different rooms in the castle, each section will feature an excerpt or miniature version of a different opera.
With concept in place, Ponasik and Mosser turned to several collaborators to realize the final project. Tim Rebers adapted the music. Quasimondo Physical Theatre's Brian Rott worked with actors Kirk Thomsen and Jessi Miller to develop the frame story. And to create these huge and fantastical moments on a small scale, Mosser and Ponasik enlisted Anja Notanja Sieger to design shadow puppets for the production.
"With puppets," Mosser explains, "she can do pretty much anything. She's exceptionally creative and pulls some great metaphors out of these mystical magical moments."
Impossible Operas runs May 25-28 at the Studio Theatre at the Broadway Theatre Center. For tickets visit the Broadway Theatre Center's website or call (414) 291-7800.
In 2010, Jeffrey Mosser was helping clean up after a flood struck the offices of Boston's Huntington Theatre Company. Among his finds, a small hardcover book, title pages missing.
"I was so intrigued by it," Mosser tells me 13 years later over a Zoom call. He holds the well-weathered book up to the camera as if it was a family heirloom. "I carried it around with me in a suit pocket. But I had no idea what I was carrying around."
The title page and introduction were missing, but the book started with a summary of Rossini's The Barber of Seville. "I wondered if this was a cheat-sheet for opera-goers," he recalls. "This is for folks who might not grasp the language or feel like they are missing out on something. It makes it accessible for them."
Mosser came across the book years later after he had relocated to Chicago and began to think about how plays and operas can be "broken down" into a few sentences. "What would it take to do an opera in the shortest way possible, but still get the full story?" he recalled thinking. "That's impossible because opera is a time-based medium. It uses big, long stories and impossible things happen: sleep walking, avalanches, nymphs, monsters."
But here was this book, he thought, condensing these big stories into a few sentences. That's Impossible!
And Impossible Operas was born.
"When I moved to Milwaukee," he says, "I had an artistic blind date with Milwaukee Opera Theatre's Jill Anna Ponasik." They had not met before, but after getting to know him, Ponasik immediately asked, "What do you want to do? What's the project you want to work on?"
Enter, once again, The Book. "Here's what I've been thinking about," he told her.
"How do we make opera "smaller" so we don't have to see it in grand opera houses? What if we gathered around a campfire and told the story of an opera?"
Or, as it turns out, the real question was a little more ambitious: What if we told the stories of seven operas? And let's go "all-in" with the "impossible" idea, he told her. "What if we find operas that are huge and fantastical, ones that are truly "impossible" to do onstage, and let's do those."
The show uses the structure of Béla Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle, but instead of unveiling the different rooms in the castle, each section will feature an excerpt or miniature version of a different opera.
With concept in place, Ponasik and Mosser turned to several collaborators to realize the final project. Tim Rebers adapted the music. Quasimondo Physical Theatre's Brian Rott worked with actors Kirk Thomsen and Jessi Miller to develop the frame story. And to create these huge and fantastical moments on a small scale, Mosser and Ponasik enlisted Anja Notanja Sieger to design shadow puppets for the production.
"With puppets," Mosser explains, "she can do pretty much anything. She's exceptionally creative and pulls some great metaphors out of these mystical magical moments."
Impossible Operas runs May 25-28 at the Studio Theatre at the Broadway Theatre Center. For tickets visit the Broadway Theatre Center's website or call (414) 291-7800.
Paul Kosidowski is a Milwaukee-based free-lance writer.
