PRECIPICE – January 8 – 11

BIOS

Susan Zeeman Rogers – Concept & Production Design

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. szrdesign.com

Rima Fand – Music

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 composed 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. Past credits include Decompositions, a one-woman show created by Tannis Kowalchuk of Farm Arts Collective (2024), Sorry About The Weather, a puppet play created by Lake Simons and performed at HERE (2022), NACL’s Courage, a roving spectacle performed on a farm (2016-2017), a workshop production of A Footnote In History, a rock band-infused play presented in the 2017 ICE FACTORY festival, 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), and Sarah Small’s Tableau Vivant of the Delirium Constructions, performed at Skylight One Hanson (2011). She has performed in many innovative music ensembles creating original music inspired by folk traditions, including the string band Luminescent Orchestrii, which toured internationally for a decade, Sherita, a Balkan and middle-Eastern inspired quartet, Hydra, a women’s vocal trio, Maputi, an mbira ensemble, and The Maybelles, an Americana string band. Rima is also a devoted educator who has worked for many years as a teaching artist in NYC public schools, specializing in exploring story and poetry through music and puppetry. She was the recipient of an Exploring the Metropolis Composers’ Residency for 2013-2014. rimafand.com

Karen Fisher – Libretto

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 progress in 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. asuddencountry.com

Mallory Catlett – Director
Mallory Catlett is 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’s Vicksburg Project (Mabou Mines), Mikael 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) which she also directed was awarded a NYSCA Commission and NY Women’s Fund grant. She will direct her second libretto, BARCELONA, MAP OF SHADOWS composed by Mikael Karlsson (Mabou Mines) in the fall of 2026. In NY her work has premiered at 3LD, HERE, Ontological-Hysteric, PS122, Pioneer Works, Abrons, LaMama, 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. Her first book: The City We Make Together, co-authored with Aaron Landsman, was published by the University of Iowa’s Humanities and Public Life Series in 2022. mallorycatlett.net  IG – @mallorycatlett

Mila Henry – Music Director

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 for Thumbprint; and Répétiteur for Pulitzer Prize-winners Angel’s Bone and 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

Tyler Micoleau – Co-Lighting Designer

Originally from Maine, lighting designer Tyler Micoleau (he/him) lives in Brooklyn. He has designed extensively throughout New York on Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway as well as regionally and internationally, for world premiere plays, musicals and operas as well as outdoor spaces and touring productions. He is the recipient of a Tony Award (for The Band’s Visit), three Lucille Lortel Awards, two Henry Hewes Design Awards, and two OBIE awards. Recent designs include: Caroline (MCC), Buena Vista Social Club the Musical (Schoenfeld Theater, Tony nomination), The Antiquities (Playwrights Horizons NYC, Lucille Lortel award, Drama Desk nomination) and Hold On To Me Darling (Lucille Lortel Theater). His last design in the La Mama Ellen Stewart Theatre was The Good Person of Szechwan (Foundry Theatre Company). Education: Bowdoin College.  tylermicoleau.com  IG:@micoleau

Olivera Gajic – Costume Designer

Olivera Gajic (Costume Designer) is a Serbian-born, New York-based costume designer and educator. To her credit, Olivera has 250+ theater, opera, dance, and film productions nationally and internationally. Her work graced the stages of Vineyard Theater, The Juilliard School, Pig Iron, Mabou Mines, Talking Band, HERE, Trinity Rep, Arden Theatre Company, Berkshire Theatre Festival, A.R.T., Huntington Theater Company, Folger, Cleveland Playhouse,  Long Wharf, PlayMakers Rep etc. Olivera’s work has been shown at exhibitions including the U.S. national exhibit at the 2004 & 2007& 2023 Prague Quadrennial and Curtain Call: Celebrating a Century of Women Designing for Live Performance (USA), Costume at the Turn of the Century (Russia), Vesuario a Scena (Mexico), SENA(Morocco), World Costume in Action (Romania).

Olivera is the recipient of the NEA/TCG CDP for Designers, IT Award , TDF/Irene Sharaff Young Master, Barrymore, and  Bessie Award Recipient for Outstanding Costume Design.  USA-local829  oliveragajic.com  IG – @oliveragajic