About Bus Stop Opera

Bus Stop Opera places investigations of the everyday within the realm of the extraordinary and sublime. The operas agitate the routine private space within the public transportation ride through conversation and transform the everyday public space of urban bus stops through operatic performance of the same conversations. The conversations are composed into libretto and scored for thirty minute operatic performances at corresponding bus stops.

Public performances take place along a city's area transit routes, with found audiences/participants. All cast and crew will utilize public transit to travel from one bus stop to the next at the completion of each opera and may perform en route to next act or full performance.

Throughout, audience collaboration with the performers is encouraged as the performers reconfigure these typical spaces. The operas accumulate mementos of the lives of city residents who utilize public transportation and frames the mundane as high art. Most significantly, public and art audiences alike will be introduced to the notion that viewers of a performance or art work may be implicated as collaborators in an attempt to create a valid illustration of reality.

Bus Stop Opera: Portland is supported in part by the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council and TriMet and is presented in conjunction with Open Engagement, a symposium of socially-engaged art work. A special thanks to The Original for feeding the cast and crew. Bus Stop Opera: Pittsburgh and Bus Stop Opera: Manhattan were made possible in part by the CMU College of Fine Arts Interdisciplinary Grant.