The New York-based artistic collective Up Until Now has announced a national, multi-year tour of the opera “Fellow Travelers” celebrating the work’s 10th anniversary.

The work will be performed in more than 10 cities in 2026 and 2027, including Seattle Opera, Portland Opera, San Diego Opera, New York’s Glimmerglass Festival, Austin Opera, and Cincinnati Opera.

In addition to the 10th anniversary tour, “Fellow Travelers” broadens its impact through the Lavender Names Project, a pioneering collaboration with the American LGBTQ+ Museum, shedding light on LGBTQ+ history and building community around the country.

This nationwide, grassroots archival research and community outreach initiative will galvanize libraries, universities, and LGBTQ+ organizations in each city. The Lavender Names Project will collect photos and stories of members of the LGBTQ+ community who were systematically discriminated against, fired, and mistreated by federal and local governments in the United States, including the military, from the “Lavender Scare” in 1953, to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the 1990s, to today.  The tour includes curated lobby installations for each performance venue, which will feature these collected stories and exhibits detailing the history of the Lavender Scare.

In a statement, Kevin Newbury said, “The national tour of ‘Fellow Travelers’ and the Lavender Names Project arrives at a moment when we are experiencing a dramatic rise in systemic attacks on the rights of LGBTQ+ people in the United States and a deliberate attempt to erase LGBTQ+ history. We are asking members of our community to share their stories so that we may uncover and preserve this history. The photos will be part of an ever-growing visual archive that will appear on stage at the end of each performance as a living memorial to the many LGBTQ+ people who suffered this decades-long persecution.”

Based on Thomas Mallon’s best-selling 2007 novel, the opera was created by composer Gregory Spears, librettist Greg Pierce, and director Kevin Newbury and published by Schott Music. The work premiered at Cincinnati Opera in 2016.

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