A PRIZE FOR EVERY PLAYER
A Prize for Every Player is a new opera adapted from a short story of the same name by the sharp and hilarious author A.M. Homes. In collaboration with composer Aaron Siegel, the opera is in development as a site-specific work, with performers walking around a real ‘everything’ store engaging in dialogue as they walk and experiencing emotional arias amidst the aisles of real goods with real shoppers looking on in amazement.
Tom and Jane Sanford take their two kids, Billy and Tilda, to the local big box store for their weekly Sunday shop. The Sanford’s have an ongoing family game where they split into teams, each team has a list of items and the goal is to see which team can get the items fastest and for the lowest price. But today is no ordinary day. The store is full of surprises, from the mundane to the life changing and the personal to the political. Their adventure ends with an unexpected family celebration that involves everyone in the store but as they get into their car to leave, they realize they forgot the cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving dinner.
Siegel and Homes were in residence at Princeton University in the spring of 2023 to develop early prototypes of the opera and worked with students to provide a proof-of-concept for this ambitious vision.
Pop-Up Preview – Saturday January 13, 2024 at 11AM
Join us on January 13, 2024 at 12 PM for a pop-up preview of this site-specific opera. Tickets are limited so RSVP today!
The artistic team for this preview includes:
Joshua Jeremiah, Tom
Rachel Doehring Jackson, Jane
Sauda Aziza Jackson, Store Manager
Lucy Siegel, Matilda
Alexa Rosenberg, Chorus and Stage Manager
Emily Teplan, Chorus and Production Assistant
Mark DeChiazza, Director
About the Artists
A.M. Homes
A.M. Homes most recent book is The Unfolding. Her previous work includes, This Book Will Save Your Life, which won the 2013 Orange/Women’s Prize for Fiction, Music For Torching, The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers, and Jack, as well as the short-story collections, Days of Awe, Things You Should Know and The Safety of Objects, the best selling memoir, The Mistress’s Daughter along with a travel memoir, Los Angeles: People, Places and The Castle on the Hill, and the artist’s book Appendix A:
Aaron Siegel
Aaron Siegel has worked as a musician, composer, organizer and educator for 25 years in New York City. In his world, there is little distinction between the activities of producing, writing, performing, listening, and learning. Celebrated as a composer of works for percussion (“hypnotic clouds of chiming tones” – The New Yorker) and the stage (“softly shattering” – NY Times), Siegel has a long history as an improvising percussionist and bandleader. Since 2011, Siegel has co-led the radical opera collective Experiments in Opera (“Raw, funny, surreal, and disarmingly human” — Opera News), helping to bring to the stage countless works by composers and writers and expanding the boundaries of musical storytelling. Always happy to explore in community with others, Siegel has created work with A.M. Homes, Mallory Catlett, Tracy K. Smith, Mantra Percussion, Anthony Braxton, Memorize the Sky, Anthony Roth Costanzo, and the EiO Writers Room, among others.