THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN

Part I: The Red Thread (Wang Lu / Deborah Brevoort) — 30-minute work-in-development presentation, piano only.

Intermission

Part II: Hilma (Daniel Zlatkin) — fully staged production, approximately 45–47 minutes.

An evening of two visionary chamber operas exploring what lies just beyond the visible world.

The Red Thread (Wang Lu / Deborah Brevoort) — presented here as a work in development — follows an adopted Chinese-American woman who travels to rural China searching for the birth mother who left her in a market basket eighteen years ago, a red thread tied around her ankle. Spare, intimate, and rooted in Chinese mythology, it asks what binds us across lifetimes.

Hilma (Daniel Zlatkin) is a fully staged portrait of Swedish painter Hilma af Klint, who channeled abstract visions from unseen spirits decades before the art world was ready to receive them. Haunting and luminous, the production brings Hilma's visionary canvases to life through light, projection, and movement.

Together, the works form an evening about women who listen for voices the world cannot yet hear.

A National Sawdust Production in collaboration with Yale School of Music and Drama, presented as part of Prototype Festival.

THE RED THREAD

MUSIC — WANG LU

LIBRETTO — DEBORAH BREVOORT

HILMA —

MUSIC & LIBRETTO — DANIEL ZLATKIN

HILMA (MEZZO-SOPRANO): CATHERINE MARTIN

DIRECTOR: JULIANA MORALES CARREÑO (Yale School of Drama alumna)