Creative Team

Composer

KEERIL MAKAN

Librettist & Director

JAY SCHEIB

after the film by

INGMAR BERGMAN

Music Director

EVAN ZIPORYN

Scenic Design

CALEB WERTENBAKER

Video & Lighting design

JOSH HIGGASON

Costume design

OANA BOTEZ

KEERIL MAKAN

JAY SCHEIB

EVAN ZIPORYN

About

Persona is a provocative, highly cerebral, and artistically complex depiction of human frailty, cruelty, and identity. Composed by Rome Prize Winner, Keeril Makan with libretto and direction by Jay Scheib, who was named by American Theater Magazine as one of the “top 25 directors likely to shape American performance over the next twenty-five years.”

Support

Commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects and National Sawdust and premiered at National Sawdust. Developed by Beth Morrison Projects in partnership with MIT. Additional funding from the National Endowment for the Arts – Art Works and the MIT School for Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences (SHASS), the MIT Music & Theater Arts Section (MTA), and the MIT Center for Art, Science, and Technology (CAST).

Press

"Hauntingly insidious, pulling the listener inexorably into this vampire-like romance"

The Wall Street Journal

"Makan sets the text with striking sensitivity to when a moment demands conversational naturalness or supple lyricism... (his) acute ear for harmony and eerie textures draw you in continually."

The New York Times

"A brilliant new opera"

Björk, in Sinfini Music Magazine

01 / 03

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