Help us bring our staging and design workshop to the North American Cultural Laboratory (NACL) in October 2023. 

This project has been in development since 2019 and received several residencies and workshops with the support of theaters and endowments such as The Dorset Theater Festival Women Artist Writing Group, HERE Arts Center, Rogers Arts Loft, and Bethany Arts. Now in 2023, we are turning the corner to completing the final draft of our libretto and score. We have been awarded an essential opportunity at NACL this Fall, however the residency is not fully subsidized and we must now raise the remaining funds in order to bring our project to fruition. 

This would enable us to bring our core team of four performers, director, librettist and composer together to rehearse and stage our final draft.

This would enable us to also bring our design team to incorporate the elements of lighting, sound and video design - integral aspects of this hybrid work. 

Born out of real life journalist Lara Logan’s traumatic sexual assault in Egypt by a mob of two hundred men, Queen of the Nile unravels the sexualization of women in media, politics and mythology, seeking truth amidst a radicalized political climate and omnipresent social media. 

When a woman reads the news about what happened to Lara Logan, she falls down a rabbit hole of investigation: uncovering the full horror of the assault, and the miracle of rescue by a group of local women.  Finding healing and power in unity, she processes her own relationship with trauma. Just as she finds her  “north star” through Logan’s courage, she discovers that her heroine has become a mouthpiece for right-wing conspiracy and is forced to wrestle with the pitfalls of idealism and confront the darkness in radicalization. 

Queen of the Nile speaks to survivors of sexual trauma;  to any female identifying person struggling with their agency. It also shines a light on how the media polarizes society, and in particular, its effects of our everyday absorption of cataclysmic trauma. 

The libretto is original text by Mariana Newhard with additional material adapted from Logan’s interviews, media posts, and Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. In collaboration with composer Dina Emerson, the score is an idiosyncratic vocabulary from pedestrian dialogue to operatic singing and spaces in between: spoken word, sprechstimme, tonal chorus, vocal landscapes, incantations, throat singing, overtone singing and musical harmonies, coalescing into a unique soundscape to articulate the collision of the quotidian, public and mythological.

Mariana Newhard (Librettist)  is a Filipina-American creator/writer/performer specializing in hybrid/devised new work. She has been a member of the Dorset Theater Festival’s Women Artists Writing Group (DTF WAW) since 2017. This past November she developed the latest draft for her hybrid opera, Queen of the Nile at HERE Arts Center. She was a writer in residence in June at the North American Cultural Laboratory (NACL)  in the Catskills. In September 2021 she was an artist in residence at Rogers Art Loft in Las Vegas, where she developed Queen of the Nile, culminating in a workshop performance at Rogers Studio Gallery. Queen of the Nile also received two workshops with HERE Arts Center in New York: in person July 20221 in their Dorothy B. Williams Theater, and digitally summer 2020 as part of the livestream series #STILLHERE.  It was first presented in 2019 as part of DTF WAW’s Sanctuary event.  Her first production, Assembled Identity (a co-creation with Kristin Marting and Purva Bedi) premiered at HERE Arts Center in Spring 2018, and received developmental support from DTF WAW, Drop Forge and Tool, NACL’s Deep Space Performance Resident Program, and the 2017 Artist Residency Program of The Drama League of New York. Mariana premiered her shorts BIg Leap, Alone and Perfect in 50 Ways at the Capital Fringe in D.C. in July 2018.  Other plays include Andromache at the Edge of the World, Zenith, Otherworld (all in development with DTF WAW) and Da Food is Da Food, developed with Packawallop Productions. 

Mariana has been an invited artist to Drop Forge & Tool’s Z Forge workshops in the summer and winter of 2018. 

Dina Emerson (Composer) received her BA in Drama from Bennington College in 1988 and 
worked in NYC from 1988-2000, where she became known as a “Vocal Chameleon”
and a specialist in new opera and 20th century music. Throughout the 1990’s into the
mid-2000’s, she was a member of Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble, with whom she
toured the world and made several CDs. She taught many workshops with the
Ensemble and developed her profound love of and fascination with the human voice
and all its potential. Dina also worked John Kelly & Co, David Soldier, The Talking
Band, and many others in NYC. In 2000 she moved to Las Vegas for a temporary lead
singer contract at O by Cirque du Soleil, and subsequently moved to another Cirque
show, Mystère. Dina lived in the SF Bay Area from 2002-2007, where she became a
well-known vocalist especially in the new music and improv world. During that time she
taught voice lessons at Mills College and collaborated on several electronic music duos.
In 2007 she returned to Las Vegas to again be lead singer at Mystère by Cirque du
Soleil, where she performed 10 shows a week for over 10 years, numbering more than
5000 shows. In 2017 she left her full-time singer position and since that time has
performed in operas, plays, and concerts around the Las Vegas Valley with Vegas City
Opera, A Public Fit Theatre Company, Majestic Repertory Theatre, Vegas Theatre
Company and The LAB LV. Dina currently sings at O by Cirque du Soleil as the on-call
singer. 

Michelle Bossy (Director)  is a Mexican-American award-winning film, television, and theater director.  

Theater projects Michelle has directed include Smile by Melissa Jane Osborne,  A Poem and A Mistake by Cheri Magid, Queen of the Nile by Mariana Newhard and Dina Emerson, The Oxy Complex by Anna Lamadrid, Lady MacBeth and Her Lover by Richard Vetere, Every Good Girl Deserves Fun by Heidi Armbruster, Sex of the Baby by Matthew-Lee Erlbach, Un Plugged In by Brian Pracht, and Sarajevo’s Child by Katie Simon, amongst many other new plays. She created the musical High School Confidential for Primary Stages with writers Janet Reed, Dan Ahearn, Sara Wordsworth and Russ Kaplan.  Some developmental readings she has directed include The Peterson Show by Janine Nabers (CTG), Louder by Caroline V. McGraw (Cleveland Playhouse, Boston Court), EL by Raul Garza (Two River Theater), Miller, Mississippi by Boo Killebrew, The Infinity Pond by Maria Alexandria Beech and Eat Your Heart Out by Courtney Baron (all at Perry Mansfield New Works Festival), Bicycle Girl by Rogelio Martinez (at Repertory Theater of St. Louis), Gloria by Maria Alexandria Beech (EST), Mercy by Adam Szymkowicz, and May Day by Molly Smith Metzler. 

Recent films Michelle directed include Nobody’s Home (feature); Under the Lantern Lit

Sky (feature); klutz. by Elizabeth Narciso; Antisemite by Etan Marciano; Early Retirement

by Pete Sabri and Susan-Kate Heaney; Chance of Showers by Julie Craig and Alex Ellis;

The Trespassed by Raul Garza; Incurable by Josephine Cashman; Miracle Baby by

Steven Fechter; The Library by Adam Szymkowicz; Friendly Neighborhood Coven by Caroline V. McGraw; Ladies Lounge by Caroline V. McGraw; 18 written by Courtney Baron; She Grinds Her Own Coffee, written by Cheri Magid; and The New 35 written by Leslie Korein.  Michelle’s films have premiered at the Austin Film Festival, St. Louis International Film Festival, Dances with Films, LA Shorts International Film Festival, and the Female Eye Film Festival, among

dozens of others.  Michelle directed the series The Broadway Babies Show by Nicole

Mangi and Leah Sprecher, and There’s a Special Place in Hell for Fashion Bloggers,

written by Amelia Alvarez. She has directed music videos for the band Yassou, and the

singer/songwriter Brooke Josephson. Recently, Michelle directed three short films for the Disney Discovers Diversity Showcase.  

Michelle was the Associate Artistic Director of the off-Broadway theater company Primary

Stages, where she worked for thirteen years.  While there, she ran the Dorothy Strelsin New

American Writers Group, where she worked with over twenty-five emerging writers on the

creation of new plays. Michelle holds the first undergraduate directing degree from Webster

University’s Conservatory of Theatre Arts. She teaches playwriting and acting for NYU,

acting for UCLA, and directing for Syracuse University’s Tepper Semester. Michelle is the

recipient of the Denham Fellowship awarded by the Society of Directors and

Choreographers for her work on Raul Garza’s play There and Back in San Miguel de

Allende, MX, and Los Angeles, CA. Michelle was a semifinalist for the HBO Access

Program, and a finalist for the AFI Conservatory Directing Workshop for Women.