Lighting Designer

Heartbeat Opera presents our 10th Annual Drag Extravaganza, a hilarious, irreverent party at the bold intersection of drag and opera! ORGY & BESS takes off from Porgy and Bess, but goes on to skewer the entire opera canon. What happens to Bess after Porgy? She stumbles from the 1920s into 2025 NYC, and the first person she meets is Cio-Cio-San from Madama Butterfly. Then it's Lucia from Lucia di Lammermoor. As more characters travel through the magical glory hole, the orgy heats up, and Bess learns about the trap of being a trope. Together with her new sisterhood, she takes a journey to radical self-love through a whirlwind of arias and numbers from Madama Butterfly, Turandot, Norma, Lucia, Carmina Burana, Lohengrin, The Mikado, The Wiz, Rent, and more!

ORGY & BESS: Deep Throats & High Notes

Judson Memorial Church

Strap into your corsets, hoist up your petticoats, and get down with the sexiest and most problematic arias ever shot out of the operatic canon. Heartbeat’s signature spectacle returns for its celebratory 10th edition, directed by none other than our co-founder and Drag Show legend, Ethan Heard. Let’s walk the tightrope of wokeness together, smear our faces with all the colors of the rainbow, and see what Bess gets up to when she meets her fellow opera queens in the dark alleys and dressing rooms of New York City.

Patty (Rhea Perlman) is an Upper West Sider of more than moderate means who’s lived according to self-prescribed rules and routines: lots of exercise and very few calories. When her daughter Cecile (Arielle Goldman) experiences sudden whirlwind success as a sculptor and turns to cocaine to help cope, Patty, with help from her overextended niece Sammy (Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer), must navigate challenges that push her well outside her carefully curated comfort zone. LET’S CALL HER PATTY is a comedy about what it means to be a mother, a daughter, or anyone in the world doing their best to disentangle life’s mess.

EPSG:4326

Let's Call Her Patty

Lincoln Center Theater

Sarah Kane’s radical reworking of Seneca’s classical tragedy of incest and unrequited lust is a bold and provocative revisioning set amidst some of the nastiest moments of the current British monarchy. One of the exponents of “in-yer-face” theatre, Kane was only 24 when she wrote this brief play as a commission for the Gate Theatre in London, but she already understood despair acutely. She was a tormented soul who wrote simply and bluntly about the world she saw around her, a world where violence and love were intertwined. She did what no one in her time managed to do: she spoke the unspeakable, delivering a brutal black comedy, a savage farce that challenges us to consider what is truly meaningful in our lives.

Department of Theatre Presents: Phaedra’s Love

Curry Student Center

A Black activist is wrongfully incarcerated. His wife, Leah, disguises herself to infiltrate the system and free him. But when injustice reigns, one woman's grit may not be enough to save her love. Featuring the voices of imprisoned people, this daring adaptation pits corruption against courage, hate against hope.

Lighting Designer

Oliver Wason

Events

Past events

Oct 30 - Nov 8, 2025

ORGY & BESS: Deep Throats & High Notes · Heartbeat Opera

Oct 30 - Nov 8, 2025

ORGY & BESS: Deep Throats & High Notes · Heartbeat Opera

About

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