On Monday, July 25th, 2011, Theater Oobleck will be holding a fund-raising event unlike any we’ve held before, to support a work unlike any we’ve ever created in our long, unlikely history:

THE HUNCHBACK VARIATIONS OPERA.

That’s right, not kidding, an opera.

The libretto’s from The Hunchback Variations by company playwright Mickle Maher (The Strangerer, There Is a Happiness That Morning Is, etc), and the music — being penned even as you read this! — is by Mark Messing, the genius behind the scores of numerous Redmoon Theatre productions, and co-founder of that mad, brilliant marching band, Mucca Pazza.

It will be a strange and hilarious and moving thing, this opera.

And on Monday, July 25th, at 7:30 PM, Mr. Messing will be finished with exactly 67.3% of its composition.

Oobleck will be presenting that 67.3% to a select audience, in a special workshop presentation, at a super secret as yet undisclosed secret presentation hideout.

And you can be a part of that audience, and hear that 67.3%.

All of it sung by people with strange, hilarious, moving and incredible voices.

But here’s the deal:

Mark Messing’s composition—as imaginative, wild, and fun as it is—is enormously demanding, and requires highly trained singers and instrumentalists to pull it off. It’s OPERA, see? To realize it fully, to bring this new, beautiful creation into the world, and to debut it before the end of this year, we require your support. After all these years (23 and counting!) of offering low cost, pay-what-you-can tickets, we need to sell you just one at the downtown fancy-pants, operatic price of $50.00.

With your ticket you’ll be there at the beginning, a beginning that you helped make possible.

There will be wine, there will be cheese. And many fascinating eaters of cheese and drinkers of wine. There will be a discussion with the composer and playwright. There will be an atmosphere traced through with that ineffable sense of Oobleckian wonder. And also cheese.

But primarily, a bringing of the New.

Please come.

THEATER OOBLECK/HUNCHBACK VARIATIONS OPERA workshop presentation.

Click here for tickets and info.

Only 60 tickets will be sold, so click now!

p.s.
If you’re unfamiliar with The Hunchback Variations (the original play), you can take a look at a couple of scenes from it here.