Someplace Fun: An Evening-Length Opera

created by Josh Brown

music direction by Kyle P. Walker

stage direction by Stephen M. Eckert

Rebecca Clarke's third child is a black hole, and as it grows, it threatens to devour both her and her two adult children, Amy and Levi. Amy clings to her adjunct position cutting open the dead to educate the living; Levi copes by making a film immortalizing his mother; everyone around Rebecca grieves her in real time, to her face. As Rebecca's illness consumes everything in its wake, the family is left to ask: what will be left, once the end finally comes?

featuring Beth Griffith, Natalie Trumm, Kyle Decker Pitts, and Athos Maelstrom

concept workshopped with Kyle Walker, Stephen M. Eckert, MaKayla McDonald, Sydney Roslin, Brian Jeffers and Brad Baron, artwork by Madeline De Michele (@demichele.art)

Josh Brown (Creator) (a.k.a. Meth Borrison) is a composer, librettist, and playwright who approaches live theatre as the final bastion of focus in a distracted world. Josh has a lot of feelings and wants you to feel them, too. Josh's theatrical work has been developed and produced by American Opera Projects, Thompson Street Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Boston Opera Collaborative, The Tank, Strange Trace, New Opera West, Actors Theatre of Louisville, and La Jolla Playhouse. Most recently, he was a Composition Fellow with American Opera Projects' 2023–2025 cohort of Composers & the Voice. BHA (Music Technology & Technical Writing) Carnegie Mellon, MS (Experience Design) Northeastern.

Stephen M. Eckert (Director) is a New York-based director whose work spans new plays, musicals, operas, and contemporary interpretations of classical texts. Their work has been described as bold, visually arresting, intellectually rigorous, unsettling, austere camp. Stephen is the founding Artistic Director of Promethean Theatre Company in New Orleans, where they directed over a dozen critically acclaimed productions between 2012 and 2017 including notable productions of EQUUS, Long Day’s Journey into Night, and The Flick. Their work has been off broadway at The Players Theatre, featured at The Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival, recognized by the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, and presented internationally at London’s TÊTE À TÊTE new opera festival and the Prague Quadrennial. BFA, Tulane | MFA, Carnegie Mellon