Alumna Ashley Tata '12 to Direct Science Fiction Opera 'Red Giant'

By
Angeline Dimambro
June 15, 2021

Alumna Ashley Tata ’12 will direct Red Giant, the first digital opera from Rhymes With Opera, on June 20, 2021.

Rhymes With Opera (RWO) is an ensemble of performers and composers dedicated to producing new operas that redefine the medium itself. Founded in 2007, the company has commissioned, developed, and staged more than seventeen chamber opera works, ranging from one-minute “signature” pieces to longer, evening-length productions. You can browse through their diverse catalogue of previous productions on their website.

Red Giant will be a live, digital, science fiction opera experience never quite seen before. On Sunday, June 20th, 7pm ET, audiences can tune in to watch Rhymes With Opera’s closing performance of the 2020-21 season. The company first staged Adam Matlock and Brian Slattery’s Red Giant in 2013, and Tata will direct RWO’s revival of the opera in their first-ever online production in this new, virtual version.

The surreal, futuristic opera centers on an intimate story about three individuals confined to a spaceship as they embark on a journey towards an unknown destination. As the sun engulfs the planet they have just fled, the three protagonists reflect on the futility of their search for a new home and their need to hold onto hope.

Black and white photo of a brunette woman

Red Giant was on the calendar as my next project from the before times,” Tata said in a recent interview with The Theatre Times, speaking about her pre-pandemic creative projects. “It’s an opera that centers around three people in space and they wake up from a hibernation period. There’s the sense that it’s very claustrophobic because it’s three people in a capsule, but they also express intense alienation from each other. We get the sense that they had to leave Planet Earth because we weren’t going to make it, so it’s another one of these pieces that works now. I think we can figure out how to do it online in a way that dramaturgically supports the content.”

In addition to directing the upcoming presentation of Red Giant, Tata has previously collaborated with RWO as a creator of their 2015 production of Heartbreak Express, an opera that follows four Dolly Parton superfans as they wait to meet their idol for the very first time. You can purchase tickets to the live virtual performance of Red Giant, as well as access the recording of the streaming video, here.

Ashley Tata is an alumna of the Theatre Program (Directing concentration) at Columbia University School of the Arts. As an artist, Tata makes multimedia works of theater, contemporary opera, performance, cyberformance, live music, and immersive experiences. Her production of Kate Soper’s Ipsa Dixit was named a notable production of the decade by The New Yorker. Tata’s works have been presented in venues and festivals throughout the US and internationally, including at Theatre for a New Audience, Ars Nova, PS21, LA Opera, Austin Opera, The Miller Theater, National Sawdust, EMPAC, BPAC, The Crossing the Line Festival, the Holland Festival, and many more. She also works in the realm of immersive entertainment, escape rooms, and advertising. Tata was also the Creative Director of Immersive Escape Productions where she devised environmental, multi-platform, immersive escape rooms, and created an experience for the musician St. Vincent tailored for the drop of her album, Masseduction, as well as led the team that was awarded a gold medal in Medical, Marketing & Media awards in 2018. She was recently awarded a MAP Grant to help fund a project in development that intends to be a sonic installation with a virtual reality embed. This work is being supported with residencies at 153 Coffey, a multi-disciplinary warehouse space in Red Hook, Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Academy of Music where Tata is one of the inaugural members of their residency cohort.