The goal of Big Box is to support new work and local artists.

CPT provides:
– The James Levin Theatre
– Basic production staff, stage management, box office support
– Marketing and advertising support

The artists provide the rest!

The writers, directors, actors, and designers selected for Big Box dedicate themselves to creating new and original work, or stretching their artistic powers by working in new disciplines.

Week #1

February 6 – 8

Nova

Composed by Lewis Nielson
Directed by Jonathon Field
Libretto by Paul Schick
Produced by Real Time Opera

This wickedly satirical one-act opera stars NOVA-life-sized android and sexbot. An “adults only” production that will shock audience members into reexamining everything they think they know about feminism, the co-modification of humans, and contemporary American marketing techniques. Please note that this production contains nudity and sexual language of a graphic nature.

Artist Bio:
Lewis Nielson studied music at the Royal Academy of Music in London, England, Clark University in Massachusetts and the University of Iowa, receiving a Ph.D. in Music Theory and Composition in 1977. His music appears through American Composers Edition and CDs of his music are available from Albany, MMC, Capstone, Centaur, Innova Recordings, and Mode. He has received numerous grants and awards for his works, including from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Delius Foundation, Meet the Composer, the Georgia Council for the Arts, the Groupe de Music Experimentale de Bourges in France, the Ibla Foundation, Sicily, and the International Society of Bassists. He has received many commissions, and his works have been performed throughout the United States, South America, and Europe. He was honored recently as the 2007 Cleveland Arts Prize laureate and in 2010-11 was a prize winner in the BCMCC, the Italy PAS Society, and the Boston Modern Competitions. He served as Professor of Music Theory and Composition at the University of Georgia, where he directed the University of Georgia Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, for 21 years. In 2000, he joined the composition faculty of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music where he is currently Professor of Composition.

Paul Schick is Artistic Director of Real Time Opera (www.realtimeopera.org), based in Oberlin, OH. He has written libretti for numerous new works, including “A House In Bali” by Evan Ziporyn, “Feynman” by Jack Vees, and “Sunburst”, “Amarama” and “Cactus Co.” by Dan Plonsey; forthcoming projects include libretti for a chamber opera by Per Bloland (Guerilla Opera, Boston, 2/15), and “Reverb: A Chronotope” by Vees (a serial surf opera for the web, 2015).

He has served on the directing staffs of the Wiener Staatsoper, the Teatro alla Scala, the Bayerische Staatsoper, and the Salzburger Festspiele, and has directed for both stage and television. He designed and directed “Shadow Bang” with music by Evan Ziporyn and shadow puppetry by Balinese masterdalang I Wayan Wija, produced by Bang On A Can. His work has been performed extensively in Europe, Asia and North America. As a producer for RTO, he recently launched a series of pop-up operas in collaboration with Cleveland artist Don Harvey, works of public art filmed for web presentation. Composers for these are Schick, Randall Woolf, David Mahler, and Larry Polansky. Videos at www.youtube.com/RealTimeOpera.

Schick’s musical compositions and other writings are published by Frog Peak Music (a composers’ collective). He has taught at Antioch University, Case Western Reserve University and Oberlin College, where he is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of German. He holds a PhD in Musicology from Yale University.

Jonathon Field has become one of America’s more versatile and popular stage directors. A trailblazer in the world of opera, Mr. Field is fascinated with traditional as well as modern stage techniques. He has developed and used video-projected scenery for over twenty-five years in productions that have been called “brilliant”, “dazzling” and “riveting”.

Mr. Field directed the American premiere of Lost Highway, an opera based on the David Lynch film,that played to sold-out performances at the Miller Theater in New York. He directed the world premiere of the jazz opera Leave Me Alone in a partnership between Oberlin Conservatory and Real Time Opera, which was one of the first operas to broadcast live on the internet. His productions for Lyric Opera of Chicago of Trouble in Tahiti, Gianni Schicchi, The Old Maid and the Thief and The Spanish Hour were successfully revived at the Illinois Humanities Festival. He directed touring productions of La Cenerentola and Die Fledermausfor San Francisco Opera’s Western Opera Theatre, which played in over twenty states. Over the past eight years Mr. Field directed ten productions with Arizona Opera, being deemed by the press “their most perceptive stage director.” From 2000 through 2006 he served as Artistic Director of Lyric Opera Cleveland, where he presented the operas of Mozart, Rossini, Donizetti and the Ohio premieres of works by John Adams, Mark Adamo and Philip Glass. Mr. Field received a Northern Ohio Live Award for his work on Don Giovanni in Cleveland, which was called, “An electrifying production that has come to be the hallmark of Field’s tenure.”

Mr. Field has been praised for his international work as well, having directed The Riverboat Show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Dido and Aeneas at Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Suor Angelica and Menotti’s Amalia al Ballo at the Urbania Festival in Italy. He has collaborated with such esteemed artists as Teresa Zylis-Gara, Jerome Hines, Pablo Elvira, Giorgio Tozzi and Angelina Reux. For many years he was associated with the Pacific Northwest Wagner Festival, working his way from Assistant Stage Manager to Associate Director, and becoming immersed in the Wagner Tetralogy.

Mr. Field’s expertise extends from the avant garde to musical comedy. In 1996, he introduced computer-generated scenery to the opera world in a production of Candide at West Bay Opera in Silicon Valley, CA, with assistance from Apple, Inc. The press called the show, “virtual Voltaire – the backgrounds are as varied as the story.” He pioneered the use of video-projected scenery in productions of The Turn of the Screw, Tales of Hoffmann and Der Freischutz. In the realm of operetta and musical theatre, Mr. Field staged H.M.S. Pinafore for Opera Omaha, Trial by Jury for Lake George Opera, Bernstein’s Wonderful Town in Chicago, and Merry Widow and Countess Maritza in San Francisco. For the Oakland Symphony he translated and choreographed Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, using members of the Oakland Ballet.

Thursday, February 6 at 7:00pm
Friday, February 7 at 7:00pm
Saturday, February 8 at 7:00pm