Project

Darkling: World Premiere Production – March 2006 

The world premiere of Darkling was performed at the East 13th Street Theater
(136 East 13th St.) in NYC February 26 - March 18, 2006. 

Adapted and Directed by Michael Comlish
text: Darkling: A Poem by Anna Rabinowitz
Music by Stefan Weisman
"The Darkling Thrush" song by Lee Hoiby

Music Director: J. David Jackson
Conductor: Brian DeMaris 

Performers: 
Hai-Ting Chinn, Elzbieta Czyzewska, Marcus DeLoach, Jon Garrison, Julie Hart, Julie Lockhart, Carol Monda, Jody Sheinbaum, Micaela Silver, Hillary Spector, Mark Uhlemann, Sid Williams, Perri Yaniv. 

FLUX Quartet:
Violin 1: Tom Chiu
Violin 2: Conrad Harris
Viola: Max Mandel
Cello: Raman Ramakrishnan 

Designers:
Lighting Designer: Brian H. Scott
Set Designer: Glenn Reed
Costume Designer: Anna Kiraly
Sound Designer: Zachary Williamson
Vocal Soundscape Designer: Tom Hamilton
Film/Video Designer: Gregory King
Projections Designer: J. Ryan Graves
Props/Asst. Set Designer: Claire Falkenberg 

Soundscape Voices:
Elzbieta Czyzewska, Yuval David, Peter Kazaras, Mikel Sarah Lambert, Julie Lockhart, Carol Monda, Yehuda Nir, Anna Rabinowitz, Dina Rose Rivera, Lois C. Schwartz, Hillary Spector, Mark Uhlemann, Sid Williams, Perri Yaniv. 

Production Staff:
Production Manager: Scott H. Schneider
Stage Manager: Sara Bancroft
Assistant Director: Crystal M. Manich
Master Electrician/Asst. Lighting Designer: William Gregory Goff
Assistant Sound Designer: Gabe Wood
Assistant Stage Manager: Rebekah K. Fredholm
Movement Coach: Hillary Spector
Dramaturg: Matt Gray
Make-up/Hair: Daniella Shachter for makeupwithdani.com
Assistant Costume Designer: Sophia Flores
Costume Construction: Katrina Jeffries, Lara Greene
Wardrobe: Rachel Ney
Alterations: Sara Rochford
Props Assistant: Kim Korba
AOP Resident Production Stage Manager: W. Wilson Jones
Construction/Carpentry: Michael Gonzalez, Ross Dawson, Kim Korba 

About the Creators

MICHAEL COMLISH (director)
Michael Comlish, an AOP veteran since 1999, has led the development of Darkling at AOP in workshops over the last 2 years. His directing has been praised by the press as "high-style," "unorthodox," "wickedly uproarious," and "anti-Romantic," and was featured in the New Yorker’s "Talk of the Town" for his casting of pundit Andrew Sullivan as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. Within the bleak world of Darkling he continues to explore a style that has been called "absurd, surreal, yet playful shifts among levels of reality." He created Nothing, from the notebooks of Richard Foreman, for the Ontological Blueprint Series. He is formerly from the Washington DC area, where he was a member of the Washington Shakespeare Company. There he directed an award winning production of Stoppard’s Travesties, The Real Inspector Hound, and co-directed A Streetcar Named Desire and subsequent revival to open WSC’s new home. Acting Roles at WSC included Edgar in Lear, Stanley in The Birthday Party, and Ken Talley in Fifth of July. For more information, visit www.comlish.com.

LEE HOIBY (song composer – “The Darkling Thrush”)
Lee Hoiby is beloved by performers as diverse as Leontyne Price and Jean Stapleton, for his numerous settings of texts from Emily Dickinson to Julia Child. Mr. Hoiby was introduced to opera by his teacher at the Curtis Institute of Music, Gian Carlo Menotti, who involved him closely in the famed Broadway productions of The Consul and The Saint of Bleecker Street in the early 1950s. His works have been recognized by awards and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1989 his work was the subject of a retrospective concert at the Kennedy Center on the American Composer Series, and a two-week festival of his work was presented by the music department of the University of California at Long Beach. His principal works include the operas The Scarf (1958 ), A Month in the Country (1964), Summer and Smoke (1971) and The Tempest (1986). He is also the composer of nearly 100 songs, as well as music for orchestra, solo instruments, chorus and the theater. He lives in upstate New York. For more information, visit www.leehoiby.com