The Manic Monologues
McCarter Theatre Center nominated for a Drama League Award
The Manic Monologues is an interactive theatrical website experience conceived of and directed by Elena Araoz. The initiative brings to life true stories – experiences submitted by resilient people across the world living with mental health challenges - and is performed by a star-studded cast. It received a 2021 Drama League Award nomination in the category of “Outstanding Digital Theater, Collection or Festival.”
The Manic Monologues was originally created for the stage by Zachary Burton and Elisa Hofmeister
for the virtual experience:
Video and Visual Web Designer: Jared Mezzocchi
Sound Design and Original Composition: Nathan Leigh
Interaction Design and Web Development: Jackie Liu
Alice in the Pandemic
White Snake Projects
Alice in the Pandemic takes a deep dive down the rabbit hole into the elasticity of time, the unmooring of life, the heroism of doing one’s job, and the reconciliation of mother and daughter. The production uses newly developed technology which enables singers at remote locations to sing synchronously together as they interact with each other and their 3D avatars who lip sync in real time to live performance.
Creator and Librettist: Cerise Lim Jacobs
Composer: Jorge Sosa
Cast: Carami Hilaire, Daniel Moody, Eve Gigliotti, VOICES Boston
Swell
Swell is a contemporary song cycle created by Melisa Tien and written by immigrants and children of immigrants, about their immigrant experience. Swell represents the voices and styles of ten composers with roots in countries all across the world, including Taiwan, Mexico, Russia, the Philippines, Israel, Japan, Trinidad, and India. The song cycle was presented live and online by HERE in March 2021.
producer, lyricist, and librettist Melisa Tien music director Tian Hui Ng video designer Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew, audio engineer Jon Robertson video engineer Paul Deziel. cast: Ricardo Rivera, Mimi Hilaire, Hai-Ting Chinn, and Alok Kumar.
a farm for meme
a farm for meme is a story about a real 14-acre farm in the middle of South Central Los Angeles, built in a vacant lot after the 1992 LA rebellion—written by Virginia Grise in the middle of today's rebellion, directed virtually by Elena Araoz during a global pandemic. Performed by Marlene Beltran, in both English and Spanish, alongside three members of Innovations in Socially Distant Performance—there were four free live broadcast performances of on August 1 - 2, 2020. It was produced by allgo and Cara Mía Theatre, in collaboration with a todo dar productions. Here you can find the archival footage.
Spring-Summer 2021 SDC Journal
Elena speaks in a Stage Directors and Choreographers Society roundtable with directors Charlotte Brathwaite, Annie Dorsen, Victor Malana Maog, and Jeffrey Page, moderated and introduced by Liz Diamond, about making theatre during the pandemic.
Innovations in Socially Distant Performance is a research project which studies the aesthetics, philosophies, tools, and artists who are transforming the fields of virtual live performance and socially distant productions. We document the advances in the field and experiment through artistic practice.
The website of Innovations in Socially Distant Performance is being archived by The United States Library of Congress. The Coronavirus Web Archive contains select web-based evidence to document the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on every aspect of American life and the many communities within the United States. ISDP has received a nomination for a Drama League Award and have been praised by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal for their virtual theatre productions.
ISDP was founded and is led by Elena Araoz and is housed at Princeton University where she is a faculty member. The project is generously supported by Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts and Princeton’s University Committee on Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences.