The Potluck
image by Emily Orling
Book, Music and Lyrics by César Alvarez
Visuals and Spiritual Dramaturgy by Emily Orling
On November 3, 1979 five communist labor organizers were murdered in broad daylight in the streets of Greensboro, NC by a group of KKK and Nazis. All five of the victims had committed their lives to fighting the rule of the capitalist class. The murders had been planned and supported by paid informants of the Greensboro Police and agencies within the U.S. government. One year later in Greensboro, César James Alvarez was born into the survivor community and named after two of the victims, César Cauce and James Waller. 36 years after that an “entertainment” company paid César to write a musical about the Greensboro Massacre, but it turned into a musical about ghosts and queerness and feelings and how to recuperate from trauma that happened to you before you were even born, and also capitalism
The Potluck is a commission of Barbara Whitman and Beth Williams
Media and Development History HERE
The Elementary Spacetime Show
Caitlin Cobb-Vialet + José Pelegri | photo by Gordon Penn
Music and Lyrics by César Alvarez
Book by César Alvarez and Emily Orling
Set and Costumes by Emily Orling
The Elementary Spacetime Show tells the story of a teenager who, after a suicide attempt, finds herself in a cosmic vaudevillian game show that she has to win in order to die. The Elementary Spacetime Show is a musical about why to exist when you no longer want to.
”The Elementary Spacetime Show, (is) a new work that, given a wide enough audience, will become Rent for the social-media generation.”
- Jim Rutter for The Philadelphia Inquirer
Media and Development History HERE
by César Alvarez and Emily Orling
Visuals and Live Ceramics by Emily Orling
egg is a performance of songs and live ceramics that calls up unthinkable thoughts about creative kinship, small town futurism, trans middle age, mediocre parenting, and the ancient unreliable religion of art making.
Media and Development History HERE
paintings by Emily Orling
egg
NOISE
Rami Magron | photo by Kata Sasvari
Book, Music and Lyrics by César Alvarez
Set and Props by Emily Orling
NOISE tells the story of a bunch of musicians who agree that society isn't working. And since civilization is found in its earliest form in musical structure, they figure they should be able to make some music that reflects a society they'd actually like to live in. Like, right now. In this musical
NOISE is a commission of NYU/Playwrights Horizons Theater School and The Public Theater
Media and Development history HERE
Painting Mary
painting by Emily Orling
by César Alvarez with Emily Orling
Painting Mary tells the story of a jewish woman who spends 20 years working on a painting of Mother Mary. Hacking a path through mental illness, artistic meltdown, and motherhood, the play turns into a musical turns into an opera turns into a piece of performance art. Mary arrives eventually. And the spirits talks to the plumber.
Painting Mary is a commission of Playwrights Horizons
The Universe is a Small Hat
Maxwell Xu | photo by Jonathan Sweeney
Book, Music, Lyrics and Experience Design by César Alvarez
Costumes by Emily Orling
The Universe is a Small Hat is a multi-player participatory musical about a space-bound collective of sentient androids who rescue a group of human refugees trying to escape Earth. Audience members immerse themselves as the human characters in a co-created musical story about weathering calamity and imagining coexistence across difference.
Media and Development History HERE