PrecipicePrecipice

Susan Zeeman Rogers is a visual artist, scenic and object designer based in New York. Her scenic designs often employ objects that can be integrated with an actor's movements and organically deepen the themes of a production. This approach propelled her to conceive and design Precipice, an object-theatre/chamber opera. Precipice is Susan’s first role as a lead artist in a theatrical production.Susan has worked with BAM Next Wave Festival, Ripe Time, New York Theater Workshop, The Prototype Festival, Los Angeles Opera, Annenberg Center, Yale Repertory Theatre, Trinity Repertory Theatre, Shakespeare and Company, Two River Theatre Company, SpeakEasy Stage Company, New Georges, Opera Boston, Merrimack Repertory Theatre, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, Curtis Opera, Opera North, Underground Railway Theatre, ART Institute and Moscow Art Theatre School. Awards include a NYSCA Artist Commission for Precipice; Drama League Nomination for Distinguished Production; Best Design, First Irish Festival; 2010 Elliot Norton Outstanding Set Design Award; 2018 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production; 1997, 2008 and 2010 IRNE Outstanding Set Design Awards; Best Design, Opera Online; NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Designers. Susan's designs were selected for the USA Exhibits at the Prague Quadrennial in 2015 and 2019. She was a 2014/2015 Audrey Resident Artist and is an Affiliated Artist with New Georges.

Rima Fand is a Brooklyn-based composer, musician and educator. An innovator who is also strongly drawn to folk traditions, she creates on an edge where the traditional meets the experimental. She has created music for performances ranging from experimental puppet theater to outdoor spectacle to large-scale tableau vivant to contemporary musical theater to clown shows. But Precipice is her first opera, and her most ambitious project to date. She has been working on Precipice since 2018, and is the recipient of a 2020 Opera America Commissioning Grant for this project. Favorite earlier projects include Sorry About The Weather, a puppet play created by Lake Simons and performed at HERE in 2022, NACL’s Courage, an outdoor spectacle presented on a farm in 2016 and Governors’ Island in 2017, a workshop production of A Footnote In History, a rock band-infused exploration of the life of Sally Ride, presented in the 2017 ICE FACTORY festival, and Don Cristóbal, Billy-Club Man, a Lorca-inspired musical puppet play created in the HERE Artist’s Residency Program and produced at the Abrons Arts Center (2013). Captivated by the music of the Balkans and Middle East, Rima has composed music inspired by these traditions in the string band Luminescent Orchestrii, which toured internationally for a decade, and more recently with Sherita, an acoustic quartet and Hydra, a women’s vocal trio. She currently plays with Maputi, an innovative ensemble exploring the mbira traditions of Zimbabwe, and The Maybelles, an Americana string band. She was the recipient of an Exploring the Metropolis Composers’ Residency for 2013-2014. www.rimafand.com

Karen Fisher has spent her life exploring the cultural, physical, economic, intellectual and emotional edges of the American west. On both sides the descendant of pioneers, she graduated from UCSB in History, B.A. cum laude. In 1990 she and her husband left secure teaching jobs to take up farming on a remote homestead in Idaho, and in 1998 they moved to a small island off the coast of Washington where they cleared forests, built a house, and sailed the Northern coasts. During her years as a mother, arborist, horse trainer, and builder, she wrote her first novel. A Sudden Country (Random House, 2005) earned high praise and awards (PEN/Faulkner finalist, Washington State Book Award, MPBA Best Novel, VCU and Sherwood Anderson Awards for debut fiction, and launched her career as a novelist (NEA recipient 2012) and writing instructor (privately and for Fishtrap).During those same years, Karen also sang and performed with a vocal and world music ensemble. Mamatamba performed frequently at Zimfest and locally, and in the following years, the music and writing informed and inspired each other. After her husband’s sudden death in 2009 and the collapse of her novel in progressin 2013, she bought a piano and taught herself to play. Music and writing together lit the way through this new deep gestation and encouraged her in her efforts to complete ongoing projects, raise her children, and find a language adequate to her new experience.She is now teaching from her island home, singing, playing, writing (poetry, memoir and fiction), and enjoying the process of moving her many creative endeavors forward through the ever-shifting fields of time, inspiration, and collaboration. A Memoir, In Reality, and a libretto for Precipice top the list.www.asuddencountry.com

Mallory Catlett is a an Obie Award-winning creator and director of performance across disciplines from opera to installation. Her work in new opera and music theater includes: Eve Beglarian’sVicksburg Project (Mabou Mines), Mika Karlsson’s THE ECHO DRIFT (Prototype Festival), Stefan Weisman’s THE SCARLET IBIS (Prototype Festival), Tarik O’Regan’s WANTON SUBLIME (American Opera Projects), Aaron Siegel’s BROTHER, BROTHER (Experiments in Opera), Dave Malloy’s BEOWULF (Adelaide & Edinburgh Festivals), Christina Campanella’s RED FLY/BLUE BOTTLE (Noorderzon & EMPAC). Her first libretto RAINBIRD (Restless NYC/Experiments in Opera/Mabou Mines) was awarded a NYSCA Commission and NY Women’s Fund grant. She will direct her second libretto, BARCELONA, MAP OF SHADOWS (Mabou Mines) in the spring of 2026. In NY her work has premiered at 3LD, HERE, Ontological-Hysteric, PS122, Pioneer Works, Abrons, Chocolate Factory, Mabou Mines; featured at Coil, Prototype and BAM’s Next Wave; and toured internationally to Canada, France, UK, Ireland & Australia. She is a Foundation for Contemporary Art 2015 Artist Grantee and a 2016 Creative Capital Artist. She is the Artistic Director of Restless NYC, an Associate Artist at CultureHub, a member of the Collapsable Hole, an artist-run development and performance venue, and a Co-Artistic Director of Mabou Mines. She recently completed her first book: The City We Make Together, co-authored with Aaron Landsman, published by the University of Iowa's Humanities and Public Life Series.

Mila Henry is a music director and pianist who maintains an active and versatile career leading works that defy genre, from rock musicals to folk operas to reimagined classics.Hailed “a stalwart contributor to the contemporary opera scene” (Opera Ithaca), Mila frequently collaborates with Beth Morrison Projects and PROTOTYPE, including Music Director/Pianist for Eat the Document; Conductor for Magdalene;Pianist forThumbprint; and Répétiteur for Pulitzer Prize-winners Angel’s Boneand p r i s m. With BMP and VisionIntoArt, she was Conductor for The Old Man and the Sea and Répétiteur for Sensorium Ex. Other collaborations include Music Director for The Hunt (Miller Theatre); Associate Music Director for The Comet / Poppea (AMOC*, Lincoln Center); Pianist for We Shall Not Be Moved (Opera Philadelphia, The Apollo, Dutch National Opera); and Répétiteur for Iphigenia (Octopus Theatricals).Mila’s musical theater work includes Vocal Director for the Obie-winning The World is Round (Ripe Time); Music Director for Early Decision (McCarter Theatre, Princeton University); and Assistant Music Director for The Night Falls (BalletCollective, PEAK Performances). She has also led projects with Circle in the Square, HERE, NYU Tisch, Page 73, and Pittsburgh CLO, and performed on cabarets at Joe’s Pub and 54 Below.Mila is an active member of Maestra and the Brooklyn Art Song Society, and was one of nine honorees for OPERA America’s 2025 Marineau Opera Grants for Women Opera Directors and Conductors. She is based in New York and plays with the alt-country band The Opera Cowgirls. Manhattan School of Music (M.M.); Elizabethtown College (B.A.). milahenry.com