Photo courtesy of the artists

5:00pm – 7:00pm
Keeril Makan/Jay Scheib – Persona (US, 2015)
81 minutes | Elebash Recital Hall (180 seats)
English
www.jayscheib.com | www.keerilmakan.com

Persona is a provocative and artistically complex opera-theatre depiction of human frailty, cruelty, and identity. The libretto has been adapted from Ingmar Bergman’s original screenplay for the 1966 classic film, which has been described as a penetrating, dreamlike work of profound psychological depth dealing, with ontological subjectivity
and the gaze of cinema itself. The film is based on Makan and Scheib’s 2015, Beth Morrison Projects produced, production of Persona at National Sawdust in Brooklyn.

*Followed by a brief discussion with the artists.

(L) Jay Scheib (R) Keeril Makan. Photo courtesy of the artists

Keeril Makan (Composer) is recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Luciano Berio Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome. Makan has also received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Howard Foundation, ASCAP and others. His work has been commissioned by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, American Composers Orchestra, Harvard Musical Association, and Carnegie Hall, among others. Makan is Associate Professor of Music at MIT.

Jay Scheib (Librettist/Director) is a director and designer of plays, operas, ballets, and hybrid live art performance events. Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Obie Award for Direction. Recent works include the Luigi Nono/Monteverdi evening, Odyssee, and his live cinema performance after Chekhov’s Platonov, or the Disinherited. Most recently he staged Giorgos Kouroupou’s two operas Pylades and Jocasta for the Athens Festival in Greece, also with conductor George Petrou. Scheib is Professor for Music and Theater Arts at MIT.