The Perspective Collective presents a musical and dramatic journey through song and ‘opera’–not just to physically dark spaces, but into the capacity for darkness within the self as well.

Along the way we might encounter a dark forest, a prolific serial killer, a recluse trapped by unsettling visions, and a wanderer trying to escape haunting memories. At the end of the road, we may even meet the devil himself in Stephanie Leotsakos’s mini-opera adaptation of Young Goodman Brown. Based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, it is the tale of a pious villager in Puritan New England who ventures deep into the woods one night and discovers a sinister secret that will call into question everything he believes in. Join us – if you dare!

In addition to Stephanie Leotsakos’s adaptation of Young Goodman Brown, performances will also feature songs by Libby Larsen, Rosśa Crean, and Michael Leibowitz.

COST

$15 General Admission
$10 Student, Senior, Fringe member or Friends of Laurel Hill Member
$2 ACCESS Cardholders

DIRECTIONS & more information

This event will take place at Laurel Hill East, located at 3822 Ridge Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19132.

Cars will not be permitted into the cemetery during the event. Limited free street parking is available in the surrounding neighborhood, as well as in two parking lots across the street from the main entrance on Ridge Avenue. Guests are encouraged to use Lyft/Uber or public transit if possible.

Accessible parking spaces will be reserved in the parking lot directly across the street from the main entrance (3822 Ridge Avenue), and an accessible shuttle from the main entrance to the stage area will be available to guests with mobility concerns. The stage area is approximately a ten-minute walk from the main entrance.

Seating will be on the grass; please bring your own chairs or blankets.

more about the perspective collective 

“Each rousing vocalist had dynamic operatic range, reach, and a quietly theatrical éclat. These qualities shined whether attending to foreign language numbers such as the arching, dirge-like melodicism and hurt, blasé lyricism of, respectively, Weill and Maurice Magre on “Je ne l’aime pas,” or to Bowles’s English-language rendition of Gertrude Stein’s note to him, “Letter to Freddy.” – Broad Street Review (The Perspective Collective, Stranger in a Strange Land, Philly Fringe 2017).

Since 2016, this chamber ensemble has had a grassroots evolution. Members Erin Brittain, Rachael Basescu, Grant Mech & Patrick Fink have presented recital, cabaret operatic & theatrical works throughout New York City & along the East Coast including Princeton/New Jersey, Philadelphia/Pennsylvania, & Asheville/North Carolina. TPC has commissioned and premiered several mini-opera projects, including Michael Leibowitz’s For Love of Country (2018), a dark fable inspired by the real-life story of Maria Buttina, the Russian spy who infiltrated the NRA to influence American politics, to sold out audiences at the Asheville Fringe Arts Festival in North Carolina. In 2020, TPC returned to the Asheville Fringe Arts Festival to premier Pripyat, a one act opera by composer Sunny Knable about the fallout (literally and figuratively) of the 1986 Chernobyl Disaster.