“MASS” BY LEONARD BERNSTEIN / STEPHEN SCHWARTZ. STAGED CONCERT. 2018. Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra + May festival chorus. light, pre recorded sound, mise-en-scene, costume, marching band, concert choir, jazz band, music theatre / classical soloists, child soloists. Shields / oliva / stokes / littleton / johannigman

by Leonard Bernstein
Cincinnati Music Hall, 2018

Produced by Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra

Directed by Marcus Shields
Conducted by Robert Porco
Choreographed by Katie Johannigman
Scenery by Frank J. Oliva
Clothes by Greta Stokes
Lights by Oliver Littleton

Photographs by Frank J. Oliva

Created in 2018 for the MAY FESTIVAL in Cincinnati, OH. ‘MASS’ was a true work of communal effort. I made the piece one year after graduating from CCM and the production was the first large scale performance to occur in Music Hall post renovation. It was my first project with Frank Oliva and my second with Greta Stokes and Oliver Tidwell Littleton. Often, I find these events that live between concert and full production to be very satisfying. We opted to embrace the mess of it and create a production that followed closely the musical structure of the work: order into chaos. Listening to certain moments in the piece, I kept thinking about velveeta cheese and a kind of high-watt, American optimism that I experienced in youth group and christian gathering in my adolescence. There is a plastic quality to it all. In the work, this optimism gives way to unsettling doubt and disorder. Which again, felt true to my own experience of religion in my life. So after spending 50 minutes building an opulent, easy cheese, decorative space, we tore it all apart. Despite the short time line and immense scale of the work, the production came together.

progression