GENRE: Music/Opera
DESCRIPTION: A modern-day lesbian pulp fiction story of love about how one girl learns to “break the rules” in order to find happiness.
PERFORMS: Monday, July 15 @ 9pm. (The Wild Project, 195 E. 3rd St, NY, NY)
TICKETS: $18. BUY TICKETS
MORE INFO:
At the Other Side of the Earth is a modern-day lesbian punk opera about love in an oppressive nation, and how one girl learns to break the rules in order to find happiness. Aurora is forced to face who she truly is when she meets Layla, an out-and-proud “riot grrrl” with a bold and brazen demeanor. Layla’s radical political activism and boyish charm cause Aurora great inner turmoil and conflict until she comes out, gaining confidence and proudly declaring herself. When the two women begin their affair, their love clashes with an oppressive, conservative society where same-sex relationships are against the law. Their struggle with a George Orwellian law enforcer, appropriately named The Man, proves to be both terrifying and hilariously futile, as the two women attempt to follow their hearts to great risk.
At the Other Side of the Earth sheds light upon queer issues that are relevant in today’s world. It is intended to be at once a painfully serious and darkly humorous view of the oppression of LGBT people. It raises the question of what lasting effect such treatment leaves upon the psyche of the oppressed. The oppression of gays is something that can and does happen at any time on the personal, societal, and governmental levels, and the opera offers a look into the human reactions of those who love passionately and have their rights challenged.
Marie Incontrera (b. 1985) is a composer, conductor and martial artist in Brooklyn, New York. She has been a recipient of the Miriam Gideon Composition Award for women composers, a winner of the Remarkable Theater Brigade Art Song Competition, a 2010, 2011 and 2012 recipient of the ASCAPlus award, a winner of the 2011 Vocalessence/American Composers Forum “Essentially Choral” readings, and was a finalist in the Iron Composer 2010 competition. She was awarded a Meet the Composer Metlife Creative Connections award for her work with the Hartford Women Composers Festival in 2010, and a New York Women Composers Seed Money Grant for her work with Alphabet Soup Productions. Commissions have come from the Young New Yorkers Chorus, Remarkable Theater Brigade, ANALOG arts, Brooklyn Art Song Society, Beth Morrison Projects, ANIKAI Dance Theater, and The Atlanta Opera. Marie has been a participant of the New York Youth Symphony’s Making Score program and the John Duffy Composer’s Institute, and has been a 2011 fellow of the highSCORE festival in Pavia, Italy. Her work has been performed in respected venues such as Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Kaufman Center, Symphony Space, the Meridian Arts Festival in Bucharest, Roulette, Galapagos Art Space, WOW Cafe Theatre, and others. Marie also produces her own work under the auspices of Riot Girl Opera, through which she creates feminist opera for social change. She was the Young Composer in Residence with Remarkable Theater Brigade for the 2011-2012 season. Marie has been named the conductor for the Green Monster Big Band for a series of upcoming engagements, for some of which she is also a guest composer and arranger. She currently studies composition and conducting privately with Fred Ho.