Zombie opera set to strike Bainbridge

Published 10:48 am Tuesday, October 20, 2015

There are many mental images synonymous with opera.

The crying clown comes to mind, as does the hefty Viking woman and a theater full of extravagantly dressed patrons, each clasping a pair of tiny golden binoculars on a stick, of course.

What does not come to mind is the shambling visage of the undead.

In fact, even more knowledgeable opera aficionados may be hard pressed to quickly come up with a production that has tackled the tricky subject of zombies. Not yet, of course.

All that’s about to change, however, as the newly formed Kitsap Fringe Opera performing company unleashes their debut production, “Maelstrom: A Zombie Opera,” coming to Rolling Bay Hall at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 22.

(Tickets range in price from $10 to $15. Visit www.maelstromzombieopera.com to purchase.)

Written by Northwest composers Reed Reimer and Benjamin Emory Larson and directed by Scott Breitbarth, “Maelstrom” examines the relationships, choices and trials of four people — two young couples with one woman pregnant -— trapped in a hospital quarantine with a rapidly spreading lethal zombie virus on the loose.

The cast is comprised of several faces familiar to local theater fans, including the company’s co-founders Heather Freese and Kelli McAuley, as well as Jacob Cole and Brian Minnick. The show also features the work of several actors as zombies and a five-person pit including one piano, two cellos and two violins.

McAuley said she and Freese, both trained singers and opera lovers, decided to form the group over “a lot of tea parties and opera talk,” with the intention of staging contemporary and youthful shows.

“We felt like there’s enough talent in Kitsap County [and] enough people interested in opera,” she said. “The goal is, obviously, to provide opera experience for younger singers and also to create opera that was more cutting edge, and involved or reached out to an audience that might not ever think about opera or might not consider opera something that they would want to be at.”

The leap from tea party talk to zombie hordes was, actually, a pretty easy one, McAuley said.

“I saw this opera when it was premiered at Portland State [University],” she remembered. “The music is beautiful and lyrics are great. It’s technically an operetta, because there is spoken dialogue, but the singing is still operatic, so it’s not really a musical.

“It’s small scale, which works well for us for production,” she added. “Even though the music is virtuosic, we could easily put this opera on with the limited means that we have, so it just seemed like the perfect thing to be our debut.”

More people would enjoy opera, McAuley said, if they were better introduced to it, or more shows featured content that was easier to relate to. Thus, Kitsap Fringe Opera’s main goal is to bring her favorite and of-misunderstood art form to the Twitter generation.

“They haven’t ever experienced opera in a way that relates to them,” she said. “We need to reach a new generation.

“We want to bring accessible opera to everyone,” McAuley explained. “[We’ll] make ticket prices affordable, make it less about the snootiness that people often relate to opera. They think, ‘Oh, opera, that’s just for rich people and it’s in Italian and you can’t understand what they’re saying and somebody’s dying.’ That’s pretty much what opera means to a lot of people, and so we wanted to put a fresh perspective on that.”

Not to say that tradition has no place in the fringe ideology, though. McAuley said the group intends to adapt and update many classic comedic operas as well as produce more original, but classically inspired works of their own for future productions.

“We don’t necessarily need to replace the large woman with the braids and Viking hat,” she said. “That will be an image that will always be there, but we wanted to maybe juxtapose that image with some of our own – and maybe that will be the pregnant Anna ready to bash all the zombies in our zombie opera.”

Music that will grab you

What: “Maelstrom: A Zombie Opera,” the debut production of Kitsap Fringe Opera.

When: 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 22.

Where: Rolling Bay Hall.

Admission: $10 to $15, visit www.maelstromzombieopera.com to view additional show dates and venues and to purchase