The Handmaids Tale
Composed by Poul Ruders Libretto by Paul Bentley
A new arrangement by Dan Schlosberg, commissioned by Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
Presented under license from G. Schirmer, Inc. o/b/o Edition Wilhelm Hansen, copyright owners.
Kamna Gupta, Conductor
Brenna Corner, Director
Amanda Testini, Assistant Director
Gillian Gallow Set, Designer
Jessica Oostergo, Costume Designer
Sophie Tang, Lighting Designer
S. Katy Tucker, Projections Designer
Anastasia St. Amand, Intimacy & Fight Coordinator
A right-wing theocracy, a burning planet, and resistance against all odds.
The operatic adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s chillingly relevant dystopian classic comes to the stage in the fully realized world premiere of a chamber arrangement by acclaimed pianist Dan Schlosberg, commissioned by Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and performed by Interplay faculty and participants.
This staging of The Handmaid’s Tale marks the culmination of a month-long residency bringing together opera singers, répétiteurs, chamber musicians, stage directors, stage managers, conductors, prop builders, and wardrobe technicians. It provides early-career opera, music, and theatre professionals the unique opportunity to work on a fully produced opera with a world-class creative team, including conductor Kamna Gupta and director Brenna Corner.
“In Dan Schlosberg we trust. He is the musical mastermind behind Heartbeat [Opera]’s daring arrangements, and his work is always intriguing.” — New York Times
“Dan Schlosberg [is] perhaps the wittiest arranger of his generation.” — Observer
Content Advisory:
This opera closely follows the themes and narratives of the original novel with imagery and scenes of sexual and physical violence reflective of the dystopian setting (including depictions of rape and hanging). Viewer discretion is advised. For a full list of content notes please contact Audience Services.
Interplay is made possible through the generous support of the David Spencer Endowment Encouragement Fund and the Yolande Freeze Master Artists in Music Fund.
Banff Centre is in partnership with the Music in PyeongChang.
Related People
Daniel Schlosberg
Brooklyn-based composer, pianist, and conductor Daniel Schlosberg’s music has been performed by the Dover Quartet, Minnesota Orchestra, Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Nashville and Albany Symphonies, at Carnegie Hall, (le) poisson rouge, Royal Albert Hall, Beijing Modern Music Festival, and David Lynch’s Festival of Disruption, and has also been featured in the New York Times and WNYC’s Soundcheck. Daniel has received the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards. He has composed for and music directed at the Soho Repertory Theater, Public Theater, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Baryshnikov Arts Center, and Playwrights Horizons. Current projects include composition and music direction for Jeremy O. Harris’s A Boy’s Company Presents (premiering Summer ‘23), music direction for Anthony Roth Costanzo and Justin Vivian Bond’s Only an Octave Apart at Wilton’s Music Hall in London (October ‘22) and at the Spoleto Festival (June ‘23), and The Extinctionist, a new opera for Heartbeat Opera (premiering Spring ‘24). Daniel is the Music Director of Heartbeat Opera, for which his radical re-orchestrations of classic operas have been praised by the Wall Street Journal as “ingenious.” In addition to collaborations with Angel Blue, Ariana DeBose, Ben Stiller, Tony Kushner, Anthony McGill, and the Imani Winds, Schlosberg was a pianist on the Grammy-winning soundtrack of Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, and a featured soloist in Only an Octave Apart with the New York Philharmonic.
Kamna Gupta
Kamna Gupta is an American Prize-winning conductor experienced in operatic, orchestral, and choral repertoires. Several premieres mark her 2023-24 season: Ms. Gupta leads the Trinity Church Wall Street Choirs and NOVUS in Luna Pearl Woolf’s new oratorio Number Our Days, and returns to Spoleto Festival USA to conduct the world premiere of Ruinous Gods. In addition to these, Ms. Gupta makes her Washington National Opera debut as the cover conductor for Songbird, joins the faculty of Banff Center for Arts and Creativity for their chamber opera program, and returns to Tapestry Opera to conduct Rocking Horse Winner which she recorded to much acclaim during the pandemic and was featured on CBC’s Saturday Afternoon at the Opera. Recent credits include Les pêcheurs de perles with Vancouver Opera, In Our Daughter’s Eyes with LA Opera and The Prototype Festival, and the world premiere of The Rip Van Winkles at The Glimmerglass Festival.
Brenna Corner
Brenna Corner is an international opera and theatre stage director working across the United States, Canada and Europe. She is also the Artistic Director of Pacific Opera Victoria, in British Columbia Canada.
Select directing projects include: Il Trovatore (Washington National Opera); Tenor Overboard (Glimmerglass Festival); H.M.S Pinafore (Vancouver Opera); Carmen (Des Moines Metro Opera); Don Giovanni (Seattle Opera); Hansel and Gretel (San Diego Opera & Vancouver Opera); La Bohème (Calgary Opera); Dead Man Walking (The Israeli Opera); La Bohème (The Dallas Opera); Noye’s Fludd & Scalia/Ginsburg (Glimmerglass Opera); Sweeney Todd (New Orleans Opera); Der fliegende Holländer (Cincinnati Opera & Houston Grand Opera); L’Elisir d’Amore (Vancouver Opera); Carmen (The Atlanta Opera); and Cendrillon & La Clemenza di Tito (Manitoba Underground Opera).
She was the founding Artistic Director of Manitoba Underground Opera, which produces a festival of new operatic experiences each August in Winnipeg. She has also worked as a dramatic coach for training programs including The Washington National Opera Cafritz Young Artist Program in Washington D.C.
Brenna made her directorial main stage debut in 2016 with a new production of Hansel and Gretel designed by the Old Trout Puppet Workshop for Vancouver Opera. This production has since toured North America, and was mostly recently produced for San Diego Opera as part of their 2019-20 season. She made her American directorial debut in February of 2017 with New Orleans Opera, creating a new production of Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
During the COVID-19 pandemic she created new opera experiences through film including Don Giovanni for Seattle Opera, Carmen: Up-Close and Personal for Vancouver Opera, Dear Mom: a web series for Kentucky Opera and Green Envelopes for Manitoba Underground Opera.
Brenna was a member of the Yulanda M. Faris Young Artist Program with Vancouver Opera and spent two years as the resident director for The Atlanta Opera Studio Artist Program. She is a certified member of Fight Directors Canada and has choreographed many fights for both opera and theatre.
She studied classical music at The University of Manitoba, and she has diplomas in theatre from Grant MacEwan College and The British American Drama Academy.
Amanda Testini
Amanda Testini (she/her) is a performer, choreographer and director based on the unceded and ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. She has worked at the Arts Club, Bard on the Beach, the Cultch, Theatre Replacement, the Firehall, the Belfry, Opera Kelowna, the Gateway, Savage Society, Theatre Under the Stars, VACT, Carousel Theatre, shameless hussy productions, Neworld Theatre, Speakeasy Theatre, the Electric Company, Vancouver Opera, and Axis Theatre. Some of her career highlights include assistant choreographing Onegin (Arts Club/Belfry), touring Canda playing lead character ‘Justine Chambers’ in Love Bomb (Shameless Hussy Productions), choreographing 4 East Van Pantos with Theatre Replacement, playing ‘Lydia Wickham’ in Miss Benett: Christmas at Pemberly, and assistant directing La Cenerentola (Vancouver Opera). Most recently, she was the 21/22 Yulanda M Faris Young Artist Stage Director at Vancouver Opera where she directed Cavalleria Rusticana: in Concert, Blond Eckbert, and choreographed and assistant directed HMS Pinafore. Currently, she is part of developing a contemporary dance show to Laura Reznek’s new record, Agrimony, led by Sophie Dow. Amanda is so grateful to be here at the Banff Centre to continue to develop her craft and dive into the rich world of opera. She also acknowledges the support of the Arts Club Theatre Company’s Bill Millerd Artist Fund. Amanda is a Jessie Award Nominee and a graduate of Studio 58.
Jessica Oostergo
Jessica is a Set and Costume Designer, born and raised in Vancouver BC, and a new resident of Edmonton. Her design work has been seen on stage and screens across North America.
Her recent design credits include: the Sound of Music (Grand Theatre); A Streetcar Named Desire, Almost A Full Moon (Citadel/Theatre Calgary); The Sound of Music (MTC/Citadel); Ring of Fire, The Legend of Georgia McBride (Arts Club); Sunrise Betties (ITSAZOO); Bunny, Stupid F*cking Bird (Search Party); An UnDeveloped Sound (Electric Company), and Julius Caesar (Bard on the Beach).
Jessica previously worked as the Assistant Head of Wardrobe for Bard on the Beach for seven seasons and taught design foundations and set design at Studio 58. She has worked as a costume builder for tv, and costumed various music videos throughout her career. Jessica also studied UX/UI design and continues to create websites and other digital projects that are not only efficient and intuitive, but also evoke visual stimulation of any user.
Jessica is a three-time Jessie Richardson Award Winner for her achievements in design, with a total of 7 nominations. She is a graduate of Studio 58 and Emily Carr University of Art + Design.
Visit jessicaoostergo.com!
S. Katy Tucker
S. Katy Tucker designs video and projection for live performance, working frequently in opera, theater and collaborating with composers and musicians. Her work has been seen internationally, including Broadway, The Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala, New York City Ballet, Carnegie Hall, Park Avenue Armory, BAM, San Francisco Opera, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dutch National Opera, Sydney Opera House, and the Canadian Opera Company, among others. She began her career as a painter and video installation artist, exhibiting her work at a variety of galleries, such as the Corcoran Museum, Dupont Underground, Artist’s Space in New York City and a video installation titled Stone Memory, commissioned by The Kennedy Center. Tucker periodically works in television and on events for Drew Findley Productions as a screens producer and animator. For DFP she has worked on The Emmy’s, Netflix’s Rhythm + Flow 2, the American Music Awards, The Soul Train Awards, and BlizzCon. Tucker was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award for Letters from Max, a Ritual.
Recent productions include Smash on Broadway with director Susan Stroman, Das Rheingold, Siegfried and Die Walkure at Teatro alla Scala, Tannhauser (Houston Grand Opera), Florencia en al Amazonas, Eurydice, Peter Grimes, Verdi’s Requiem, and Prince Igor (Metropolitan Opera), Florencia en el Amazonas (Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, and Washington National Opera), Rebecca Das Musical (Vereinigte Bühnen Wien), Klangwolke 23 (Brucknerhaus), and Turandot, MacBeth, Fidelio, Elektra, Don Giovanni, and Samson and Delilah (Washington National Opera).
Upcoming: The Ring Cycle (La Scala) and Medea (Lyric Opera of Chicago)
Anastasia St. Amand
Anastasia (she/her) is a queer, certified intimacy director, coordinator and fight designer from Mohkinstsis (Calgary) on Treaty 7 Territory. She is a founding member of Principal Intimacy Professionals (PIPs), and an instructor for the PIP’s SAG-AFTRA accredited intimacy training program. She’s worked with students at Ambrose University, UBC and UofA and is on the Board for the National Society of Intimacy Professionals. Anastasia holds mental health and trauma-informed care as central to her practice.
Select credits include: Legally Blonde (Citadel Co pro), A Streetcar Named Desire, Beaches the Musical, Selma Burke (Alberta Theatre Projects Co Pro), Meteor Shower, Escape To Margaritaville (Theatre Calgary), Hurry Hard (Western Canada Theatre), Mary Stuart (SAGE Theatre), Girl On The Train (Vertigo), Bombay Black (Alberta Theatre Projects), A Midsummer Nights Dream, Measure For Measure (Free Will Shakespeare), Genesis: The Mary Shelley Play (ACT Edinburgh Fringe), Guilty Party (Paramount+), Peacemaker (HBO), Upload S2 (Amazon).
Special thanks to her PIPs Pals and loved ones for their ongoing support.