Now entering its ninth season, Beth Morrison Projects and HERE’s annual festival, “PROTOTYPE: Opera | Theatre | Now,” is set to run from January 8- 16, 2021.

Curated by festival directors Jecca Barry, Kristin Marting, and Beth Morrison, this run of events will see the world premieres of three vocal theater works.

 “The works our audiences are used to seeing in PROTOTYPE generally take three to five years to develop and produce,” said the festival directors in a joint statement. “This year, as COVID necessitated that we put aside our originally planned festival, we recognized an opportunity. Warp-speed festival curation and artistic creation meant we could directly respond to our current time. To what has happened to our world in 2020. While we can’t gather together in the dark of our beloved theatres, we can still take our audiences on a journey. A journey for this moment; one that has asked a group of artists to dream in different ways, collaborate in different ways, and create in different ways. The world is suffering in unimaginable ways right now. We believe that the best way for us to respond is to do what we do best – giving audiences a festival filled with astonishing work by breathtaking artists.”

First is “Modulation,” an exploration of how opera and theatre can adapt to digital formats. Audience members will be able to choose a path through a series of musical and visual pieces which deal with themes of isolation, identity, and fear. This work was created in partnership with Imaginary Places, the creators of the digital quarantine work “Decameron Row.”

Streaming Date: Jan. 8-16, 2021

The following day, the festival will launch “Times³ (Times x Times x Times).” This immersive work is created by composer Pamela Z and theatre artist Geoff Sobelle, and is described as a musical journey through Times Square as audiences explore the history of the center of New York City.

Streaming Date: Jan. 9, 2021

“Ocean Body” will be a multi-screen and music installation at HERE. Audiences of eight people at a time can experience this new work by composer/vocalists Helga Davis and Shara Nova, director-filmmaker Mark DeCiazza, and visual artist Annica Cuppetelli.

Performance Date: Jan. 9, 2021

The festival will also include three works which are available to stream for free on their website: “The Murder of Halit Yozagt,” by Ben Frost and Petter Ekmann; “The Planet – A Lament,” by Garin Nugroho and Septina Rosalina Layan; and “Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists,” by Valgeir Sigurðsson,  A. Rawlings, and Sara Marti.