People

is a director and creative producer based in NYC. In addition to co-founding Prototype, she is HERE’s Founding Artistic Director Emeritus. Over the last 30 years, she cultivated artists and programmed all events for HERE’s two performance spaces for an annual audience of 30,000. She co-created and curated HERE’s Artist Residency Program. Under her leadership, HERE garnered eighteen OBIE Awards, two OBIE Grants and a CUNY Booth Award for artistic achievement, two Berilla Kerr Awards, four NY Innovative Theatre Awards, two Bessie Awards, two Pulitzer nominations, six Drama Desk nominations, two MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowships and seven Tony nominations. Kristin has created and directed 36 world premieres (15 hybrid, 9 opera/music-theatre, 8 adaptations of novels/short stories & 5 classics). In addition to Eat The Document, which she is directing in this year’s edition of Prototype, she is currently developing Joan of the City with Kamala Sankaram and Mano a Mano with Paul Pinto. Other recent projects include Silent Voices (BAM), Looking at You (also with Sankaram), and IDIOT with Robert Lyons. She has lectured and been a guest artist at Bard College, Brown University, Columbia University, Harvard University, NYU and Williams College. She was recently named a nytheatre.com Person of the Decade for outstanding contribution, a Leader to Watch by Art Table, and honored with a BAX10 Award.

Recipient of the Musical America Award for Best Artist of the Year as Agent of Change and noted as a “contemporary opera mastermind” (LA Times) and “a powerhouse leading the industry to new heights” (WQXR), Beth Morrison is an opera-theatre producer and the President and Creative Producer of Beth Morrison Projects. Beth created Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) in 2006 to identify and support the work of emerging and established living composers. BMP is celebrated as an industry disruptor and tastemaker at the forefront of musical and theatrical innovation by commissioning, developing, producing and touring the groundbreaking new works of these living composers and their collaborators, which take the form of opera-theatre, music-theatre, and vocal-theatre. BMP encourages risk-taking and the result is provocative works that represent a dynamic and lasting legacy for a new American canon. Opera News has noted: “More than any other figure in the opera industry, Beth Morrison has helped propel the art form into the twenty-first century.” In 2013 Beth co-founded the PROTOTYPE Festival with HERE, which has become “essential to the evolution of American opera.” (New Yorker). Beth served a founding tenure as Producer for the Yale Institute for Music Theatre, as well as Producer for New York City Opera’s VOX: Contemporary American Opera Lab. She first honed her management skills as the Administrative Director for the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. She is currently an advisory board member of National Sawdust and Brooklyn Youth Chorus, as well as a board member of Opera America, the international competition, Music Theatre Now and Voices 21C, a social justice choir. Morrison is frequently asked to give lectures at conservatories across the country, including Yale, Mannes School of Music, NYU, Manhattan School of Music, Arizona State University, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and more. Morrison is also in demand as a speaker both nationally and internationally and has delivered key note speeches for Classical:Next and Opera Europa among others. Morrison holds a Bachelor of Music from Boston University, a Master of Music from Arizona State University, and an MFA from Yale School of Drama.

Sarah Bellin is an internationally active producer, director and musician working for both stage and film. During her tenure as Managing Director at BEDLAM, she spearheaded the production of the company’s innovative Shakespearean New Media Series.  Sarah has worked extensively throughout the German-speaking world including at the Zürich Opera, Berliner Festspiele (Theatertreffen), Zürcher Festspiele, Schauspielhaus Zürich, Theater Tuchlaube, Turbine Theater, Stadt Theater Bern, as well as at the Avignon and Edinburgh Festivals. Co-founding director of the Swiss performance group Kollektiv-20-14 as well as a frequent collaborator with the  experimental theatre company stringsaTTached. Sarah was a 2015 and 2021 Fellow for Artistic Research at the Zurich University of the Arts.

Julia Mendes first worked with Beth Morrison Projects as the Associate Producer for the 2023 PROTOTYPE Festival. She has worked as a producer and administrator for a range of other organizations in the fields of music, theater, and film, including Mabou Mines, Sundance Institute, Second Stage Theater, and NJPAC, and is a proud graduate of Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts. She is thrilled to be part of the BMP team, helping bring innovative new music into the world.

Zach is excited to join the BMP / Prototype Team full time after 10 years of freelancing as a production manager and stage manager for opera, theatre and events in New York City and regionally. Favorite production management credits include The Public Theater, Opera Omaha, Bedlam, Page 73, and The Civilians. Favorite stage management credits include American Soldier at PAC NYC, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, two seasons with Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Houston Grand Opera, Detroit Opera, Hawaii Opera Theatre, The Public Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, American Repertory Theatre, and Seattle Repertory Theatre.

Noel is a nonprofit fundraiser and classically trained percussionist who is thrilled to be joining the BMP team. With degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the University of Miami, they look forward to blending their passion for contemporary chamber music with fundraising to support BMP’s vision for cutting-edge opera and vocal theater. Previously, they held positions at the Aspen Music Festival and School and the Adrienne Arsht Center.

Maeve is a Brooklyn based marketing manager, director, and playwright. She has directed her original work Home’s Kitchen (World Premiere, NOCCA, Broadway DNA), A Woman of No Importance (Central Square Theater Cambridge), & Vera, or the Nihilists (Emerson College.) Her film credits include Coda (Actor, Oscar Winning Best Picture). Maeve’s work focuses on LGBTQ+ rights, the meaning of home, and emotional abuse. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of The Dyon Collective & an associate member of the Stage Directors & Choreographers Union and the Dramatist Guild.

Rachel Leighson is a performer and playwright based in NYC with a passion for new work development. Writing credits include: Little Egg, Big World (honorary mention for the 2022 Jane Chambers award in feminist playwriting), Blood on My Mother’s Apron, The Bender Girls, Moses Never Had to Make a Brisket, and Clean Slate. Rachel has written commissions for Cultivate Theater Project and Feminist Fairytales Radio Plays and also served as a resident playwright with PlayGround-NY. As an actor, Rachel has been seen Off Broadway in The Christians (Playwrights Horizons), Lili Marlene (St. Luke’s Theater), and Before a League (Actors Temple Theater) as well as on multiple television shows and regional theater stages. She is thrilled to return to the BMP team to support the creation of innovative, creative opera and vocal performance.