Worlds Elsewhere Theatre Company Presents:
Musica Universalis Book 1
Adventure at the Heart of Creativity
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Announcing the soft open of the Worlds Elsewhere Theatre Company 2023 Season, a collaboration with Fantasy Worlds Elsewhere, and the culmination of our 2023 Season Fundraiser.
Can our heroes, gathered from across the theatrical and literary cosmos, be able to stop whoever is trying to silence the Music of the Spheres, replacing it with their own design and destroying all creativity forever?
Join GM Conor Duffy and a colorful cast of characters to find out!
Company Artistic Statement
Theatre, given its nature as a medium made of people in space, has always been a first victim during times of plague. When the COVID-19 pandemic spread through the world at the start of the year 2020, theatres closed, and millions were left unemployed. Worlds Elsewhere Theatre Company was founded during this terrifying time. It is our mission to create theatre without a theatre - to create a space online that can serve as a theatrical one. Our company shall create an online space that serves the same function that theatre has served for millennia – as a place of catharsis and healing.
About This Production
Musica Universalis is a very blunt examination of how corporations commodify art. While a small number of intellectual properties are stripped for parts, there still exist those who dance and create things both beautiful and messy. Stories are essential to the development of our species. Why would we ever waste our time doing something so inefficient as spinning a yarn or sketching our dog if we did not utterly need to do it? If to not do it would destroy us?
Our antagonist, The Thief, seeks to reduce the Music of the Spheres down to a single note, never changing. It is not simply an act of theft, but one of annihilation. We craft worlds that exist only within our minds, but to the characters we place in those worlds, they are as real as that which we perceive right now. Every character in this piece is real, interpreted through their players to bring you this story.
This is not a play. It is a game, and within the confines of that game’s rules, we make a brand new story every time we roll the dice. That alone is an act of defiance.
~ Conor Duffy, Module Writer and Game Master
Cast and Crew
Players
Justin Bailey (he/him) as Jean Valjean
from Les Misérables
Katherine Duffy (she/her) as Morgan Le Fay
of myth and legend (and many works of literature)
Adrianne Greenberg-Sud (she/her) as Alice
from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass
Sam Marchiony (she/her/they/them) as Christine Daaé
from Le Fantôme de l’Opéra
Ellie McConnaughy (she/her) as Titania
of myth and legend (and A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
and
Conor Duffy (he/him) as The Game Master
Guest-Starring as Non-Player Characters
Bex Silberfein (they/them/she/her) as Sir Thomas Tom from “The Knight Whose Armour Didn’t Squeak”
Laura Crone (she/her) as Prospera from The Tempest
Jasmine Garcia (fae/faer/she/her) as The Sweet Witch from “Hansel and Gretel”
Ilana Greenberg (she/her/they/them) as The First Goddess
Production
Module Author and Director: Conor Duffy (he/him)
Producer: Ilana Greenberg-Sud (she/her/they/them)
Technical Director: Adrianne Greenberg-Sud (she/her)
About WETC
Artistic Director / Co-Founder: Ilana Greenberg-Sud
Director of Digital: Adrianne Greenberg-Sud
Director of Finance: David Neubauer
Co-Founder: Kyle Kallgren
Worlds Elsewhere Theatre Company is based in New York City, Seattle, and the Central California Coast,on lands home to the Munsee Lenape, Duwamish, Coast Salish, and Chumash peoples.
In addition, Worlds Elsewhere’s company and repertory members are located on the lands of the following peoples:
Abenaki Chumash Coast Salish Duwamish Erie Kaskaskia Massa-adchu-es-et (Massachusett) Munsee Lenape Naumkeag Pawtucket Pennacook Pentucket Schaghticoke Seminole Tongva Wabanaki Wappinger
We acknowledge that this land came into government possession through acts of genocide, as part of our commitment to work towards addressing the impacts of those acts in our pursuit of social justice, and to foster a world where such injustices are truly consigned to the past.
Tribe names provided by Native Lands Digital
For more information, consult #HonorNativeLand — US Department of Arts and Culture
Project Attributions
- Banner Design and Logo by Ilana Greenberg-Sud and Adrianne Greenberg-Sud, using assets from SnapdragonOverlays and IDDesignCrafts, used under license.
- Teaser #1 by Adrianne Greenberg Sud, using assets from SnapdragonOverlays and IDDesignCrafts and Music from Nicolas Jeudy / Dark Fantasy Studio, used under Premium License.
Character Images and Tokens
- Christine Daaé image: Christina Nillson, 1843-1921, Opera Singer, as Ofelia, Portrait by Alexandre Cabanel, ca. 1868. Used under the Public Domain.
- Titania image: Titania sleeping in the moonlight protected by her fairies, by John Simmons (1823-1876), date unknown. Used under the Public Domain.
- Alice Image: illus. by John Tenniel, from The Nursery “Alice”, by Lewis Carrol, 1890. Used under the Public Domain.
- Jean Valjean Image: illus. by Émile Bayard, from Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo, 1862. Used under the Public Domain.
- Morgan Le Fay Image: illus. by Dora Curtis, from Stories of King Arthur and the Round Table by Beatrice Clay, 1st Edition, 1905. Used under the Public Domain.
Additional Attributions coming soon.