Description
Nautilus Music-Theater is the only arts organization in Minnesota, and one of the few in the country, dedicated both to creating new opera and music-theater pieces and to developing creative and performing artists. We form partnerships between creators, performers, and audiences in order to contribute to the quality and diversity of new American music-theater. We envision an extended family of artists and audiences that uses music-theater as a tool to support the individual and collective growth of the human spirit. Originally created in 1986 as The New Music-Theater Ensemble (a program of The Minnesota Opera), we incorporated separately in 1992, and changed our name to Nautilus Music- Theater in 1996. Over the years, we have coordinated over 160 workshops and developmental sessions for music-theater creators and performers; produced over a dozen critically-acclaimed world premieres; instituted our popular Rough Cuts series for reading works-in-progress, recent work developed elsewhere, and pieces we have commissioned; presented innovative productions of existing work. We are professional members of Theater Communications Group, Opera America, and Minnesota Citizens for the Arts. We have created a four-part structure to realize our mission: Our Artist Development Program provides growth opportunities for composers, writers, performers, directors, and musical coaches. Rough Cuts is a series of informal monthly presentations of works-in-progress, dialogues between artists and audiences, and explorations of the creative process. Productions allow us to present fully-staged productions of full-length music-theater works, including premieres of new work we have developed and supported, or innovative productions of existing operas and musicals. Community Commissions are projects or services initiated by or commissioned for specific communities, such as other arts organizations, academic institutions, or human service organizations. These four programs, developed and refined over the past two decades, allows Nautilus to meet the needs of our diverse Twin Cities (and national) community, including creative artists, performers, and audiences. They provide maximum flexibility, and support any initiatives that might spring from the vision of the artists with whom we work.
