SHOW DON’T TELL
ABOUT
Formed in 2013 by artistic director Daron Hagen and named after Orson Welles' Mercury Theater, the New Mercury Collective exists to create and sustain a laboratory for artistic exploration, creative risk-taking, and performance in which its members can collaborate on the creation and performance of post-genre works combining theater, music, and emerging technology for audiences of all types underpinned by a fierce commitment to social justice and civic activism.
TNMC collaborates with an array of co-producers and presenters, including Aria 412 (Pittsburgh), Burning Sled (New York), 534 Productions (New York), the Chicago College of Performing Arts, Skylight Music Theater (Milwaukee), production groups including Bento Box Media, Capture Media, Atlas Arts, ensembles including the Fifth House Ensemble, Prism Players, Rize Orchestra, and Phoenix Players, institutional partners including Peermusic Classical (music publishing), McFarland and Company (print publishing), Encompass Arts (representation), and Cory Fields and Associates (legal). TNMC Members include mid- and late-career, internationally-active creative performers, writers, arts management professionals and emerging artists in theater, music, and film as well as emerging professionals.
Recent TNMC communal projects include the operafilms Orson Rehearsed, 9/10: Love Before the Fall, and I Hear America Singing. Currently in pre-production are the operafilms New York Stories (in collaboration with Eugene Opera (WA) and Hide (with the Sidra Bell Dance Company.)
The Bardo Trilogy: three films about people dealing with the liminal zone between life and art, being and not.
“We’re going for something new here together that combines the emotional impact of cutting-edge live operatic performance with the psychological verisimilitude of gritty fourth-wall-demolishing auteur filmmaking. In short, neither film nor opera, but images storyboarded, directed and edited to the rhythm of the score by the composer himself, brought vividly to life by brave, fiercely-committed performers.”
SOME OF OUR COLLABORATORS
