REVIEW: The Water Isn’t Fine, by Ben Barsotti Scott

REVIEW: Up a Creek, by (Saskia) Max(well) Keller

TAK member (and Newtown Odyssey performer!) Charlotte Mundy has a conversation with Marie Lorenz and Kurt Rohde about Newtown Odyssey.

Marie Lorenz, Kurt Rohde, and Dana Spiotta in Conversation by David Humphrey: A site-specific opera interweaves mythology and modern waste on the water.

Newtown Creek is not just a Superfund site but the site of a floating opera, with a libretto by Dana Spiotta. By Ben McGrath

Artist Marie Lorenz and author Dana Spiotta join Rail contributor Gaby Collins-Fernandez for a conversation.

Why write a normal opera when you can write one for an outdoor performance on top of a polluted urban creek? Is it easy? No. Is it worth it? Absolutely. The creators of Newtown Odyssey, an actual floating opera, ask us to get our shoes a little dirty, let birds and machinery join the opera, and appreciate the horror and beauty of rainbow patterns of oil on the creek’s surface. They speak about the joys and challenges of collaborating with each other and their literal surroundings on unconventional work, and how they hope to help the efforts of the Newtown Creek Alliance.

Newtown Odyssey brings opera to a creek in New York City. The Newtown Creek forms part of the border between the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, and is one of the most polluted industrial sites in the US, but traveling there by boat can be an unexpectedly beautiful experience. Set on a busy canal in a densely populated city, Newtown Odyssey, created by 2021 Grantees Marie Lorenz, Kurt Rohde, and Dana Spiotta, presents a non-traditional opera heard amid the sounds of surrounding traffic and industry. Performers sing aboard floating stages and pass by in boats, while the audience observes from shore.

On this episode of the Selection Committee Radio Show, artist Marie Lorenz and musician and composer Kurt Rohde introduce their opera Newtown Odyssey, named after the same creek as Newtown Radio.

Marie Lorenz and Kurt Rohde: Listening to the Creek, by Dylan Gauthier

A Floating Opera: Music Professor Part of Trio Behind Opera About Toxic Waterway

Orion Magazine, “Wild Swimming” by Samantha Hunt. On the dangers, joys, and damp insurgency of public water.

Professor of English Dana Spiotta and her colleagues receive a Creative Capital Award for their new floating opera, Newtown Odyssey.