A NORTH STARR RESIDENCY
Join us for a staged reading/singing of a new musical by Obie Award-winning composer and performer Heather Christian and her genre-defying group, the Arbornauts. Animal Wisdom is a folk-blues opera masquerading as a concert of songs and stories written from theoretical or actual (you decide) conversations with the dead.
A pastiche of poorly remembered Methodist hymns from the 1800’s, hyperbolized family mythologies, gothic Catholic masses for the dead, Southern Native American folk tales passed down and bastardized in Louisiana, and a fervent belief in ghosts—Animal Wisdom just may make you a believer.
“Christian howls like a werewolf with a voice made of molasses.”
NACL is pleased to announce the inaugural NORTH STARR RESIDENCY, a new partnership with The Bushwick Starr, which offers our audiences a first look at new works in development slated for full production at the Bushwick, Brooklyn venue.
HEATHER CHRISTIAN is an Obie Award winning composer/performer. Composing/Performing credits include the National Theatre London, BAM, Ars Nova/Sundance Theater Lab, West Yorkshire Playhouse, and LaMama ETC. She has recently emerged as a film composer (Lemon, Sundance and SXSW, Gregory Go Boom, Sundance Grand Jury Prize) and has written incidental music for plays at the Brick NYC, LaMama ETC, and Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. She is a longtime collaborator in devised theater with the TEAM, Jane Comfort Company, Mac Wellman, Big Dance Theater, Taylor Mac, and Witness Relocation. She was recently named one of TimeOut NY's Downtown Innovators To Watch. She has recently been seen in Taylor Mac’s 24 Decade History of Popular Music and in Toshi Reagon’s Parable of the Sower. She has released 8 records, taught an Atelier at Princeton, owns and operates her own recording studio in Beacon, NY, and can be seen all over the world as Heather Christian & the Arbornauts in concert halls and dive bars avant-torching.