Lacy Rose: Visions - A Meditation on the Female Muses of Gustav Klimt presented in partnership with PROTOTYPE

Lacy Rose is a lyric poet, composer and vocalist who regales listeners with tales of magic, myth, tragic and eternal love. Long fascinated by the silent figures in Gustav Klimt’s paintings, VISIONS is a new song cycle that gives voice to the women depicted in Hope I, Hope II, Ria Munk, and Portrait of a Lady. Over four acts, each inspired by one of the paintings, Lacy—backed by her Starling Quartet—delves into the rich histories of the works themselves while exploring broader themes of birth, death, and rebirth, as well as identity, pregnancy, and new ways of seeing.

Lacy Rose (Composer & Performer) is a lyric poet, vocalist, and composer who writes and performs contemporary art songs. Her imagistic storytelling blurs the lines between song cycle, surrealism, and incantation.  

Rose has performed at venues such as National Sawdust, HERE Arts Center, Mabou Mines, Lincoln Center and more. 
 
She has also performed in world premieres such as PRECIPICE at La Mama (composed by Rima Fand), We Don’t Need the Sea to Drown at National Sawdust (Sxip Shirey & Coco Karol), and The Lydian Gale Parr at Target Margin Theater (composed by Alaina Ferris). 
 
A recipient of the NYFA Women’s Fund grant, Rose’s song cycle LISPECTOR, a 13-song musical meditation on the radical life and works of Brazilian author Clarice Lispector, was co-produced by arranger Isaac Hayward and engineered by three-time Grammy Award winner John Kilgore. 
 
Rose is thrilled to have the world premiere of VISIONS, an ekphrastic song cycle that gives voice to the silent muses of Gustav Klimt’s paintings, at Joe’s Pub for the 2027 PROTOTYPE Festival. 

 

Dara Malina (Director) is a director of theatre, opera, performance art, and video. Her personal practice interrogates abjection, gender, violence, discomfort, and comedy.  

 

In collaboration with Lacy Rose, Dara recently directed Lacy’s concert with her Starling Ensemble as part of Mabou Mines + RE/VENUE's AND... festival. It was a musical seance featuring surrealistic, genre-defying original art songs that explored time, metamorphosis, the Divine Feminine, and the cycle of birth-death-rebirth. Previously at Mabou Mines, Lacy and Dara developed an opera adaptation of Clarice Lispector's THE PASSION ACCORDING TO G.H. as part of their Resident Artist Program. Other opera projects include the world premiere of THE ARTWORK OF THE FUTURE, a new opera by Eric Moe and Rob Handel at HERE, and a series of opera music videos with The Pleiades Project.  

Often working on new plays, she worked with Nurit Chinn on her adaptation of INTERNEE NUMBER 6 by Maria Eisenstein, a memoir about the fascist internment of Jewish women in Italy during the Holocaust. Dara collaborated with Amanda Horowitz on the development of her play, HEAVENLY FOOLS, under the guise of the Rutgers University MFA Playwriting program. She completed the Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellowship developing COACH COACH by playwright Bailey Williams. As theaters began opening up post-pandemic, Dara directed Alexis Roblan’s SAMUEL, a critically-acclaimed audio play/walk-through experience at The Tank, which critic Helen Shaw called, “deliciously lurid.”  

She was Associate Director to Ian Rickson on August Strindberg’s CREDITORS adapted by Jen Silverman as part of the TOGETHER, a theatrical collaboration between Sonia Friedman, Hugh Jackman, and Director Ian Rickson. 

 

Dara has worked as a guest director and educator at Barnard College, Rutgers University, Ramapo College, LIU-Post, Pace University, Montclair State, and Alfred University. Next, she will be directing at Bard College and will return to Ramapo to teach and direct in their upcoming season. MFA, Columbia University School of the Arts. Member: Ensemble Studio Theatre, New Georges Affiliated Artist. www.daramalina.com 

 

PROTOTYPE is produced by Beth Morrison Projects, a trailblazer in the creation and presentation of contemporary, multi-disciplinary opera-theatre and music-theatre works. The visionary festival is the only one of its kind in New York City and around the country – producing and presenting a wide spectrum of works, from intimate black-box experiences to larger chamber opera productions, valuing artistic, curatorial, and producorial risk-taking. 

 

PROTOTYPE is committed to surprising our audiences and confounding their expectations through content, form, and relevance. The festival gives voice to a diverse group of composers, librettists, performers and musicians across all genres, backgrounds, and cultures. In providing a recurring showcase of visionary opera-theatre and music-theatre pieces, the touring life of the work extends around the world. The festival also presents groundbreaking new works by international artists and has become a global reference of artistic excellence in the field of opera and music-theatre. 

 

PROTOTYPE was co-founded in 2013 by Beth Morrison Projects and HERE under the leadership of Beth Morrison, Kristin Marting, and Kim Whitener.