City of Sin — a double bill of two one-act operas

Mahagonny Songspiel

By Kurt Weill and Bertholt Brecht. Directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer, lighting design by Lucas Krech. Produced by West Edge Opera at the El Cerrito Performing Arts Theater, July-August, 2012.

The stage director had the idea of imagery of toys and models as a backdrop to the story of six characters in search of Utopia who end up being thwarted by their own shortcomings. The wonderful Golden Gate Model Railroad Museum in Point Richmond provided the trains. I built most of the paper houses for the City of Mahagonny — Elkhanah built the rest — and assembled the cat-sand island of Benares on my kitchen table.

The 10-piece jazz band was upstage center. Two short-focus projectors on either side of the band projected side-by-side images on the white cyc, for a screen area 11' 4" high by 30' wide.

Vera of Las Vegas

By Daron Hagen and Paul Muldoon. Directed by Mark Streshinsky, lighting design by Lucas Krech. Produced by West Edge Opera at the El Cerrito Performing Arts Theater, July-August, 2012.

The second show of the evening used the same stage arrangement as Mahagonny Songspiel.

In addition to backdrops for the scenes, the stage director wanted some literal interpretations of the wide-ranging references in Muldoon's libretto. Some of these required variable-speed control of the projections to keep the images in sync with the performance. The projection operator continually adjusted the speed of the video to match the current location in the score, as indicated by the current measure number in a window on the monitor screen.