Media Contact:

Aliana de la Guardia, Artistic Director
alidelaguardiaguerillaopera.org | (617) 286-6723 (call/text)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

*Aliana de la Guardia in SALT, Museum of Science, Boston, MA. Photo by Timothy Gurczak, November 2021*

August 1, 2022 (Boston, MA & New York, NY) - The Guerillas of Boston take SALT, their most experimental work to New York’s 2022 Ice Factory Festival. SALT is a monologue for soprano and electronics, in which an elder woman reflects on her salty life of feeling trapped in an abusive and loveless marriage, as she cooks soup for her husband and contemplates a way out. The newly expanded work features an electronic score composed by Bahar Royaee, is written and directed by Deniz Khateri, and plays for four performances Wednesday, August 17 through Saturday August 20, 2022 at 7:00PM in the New Ohio Theatre at 154 Christopher Street, #1E, New York, NY. The performance on Thursday, August 18, 2022 will live-stream at 7:00PM EDT and is then available on-demand throughout the rest of the festival. SALT is approximately 40 minutes in duration and sung in English. Tickets are $17-$20 and are available now at newohiotheatre.org/programs/ice-factory/salt/.

The music of SALT features otherworldly drones, traditional Iranian chanting, and experimental vocalizations that transport audiences into a surrealist story of a woman on the edge. The music fuses traditional Iranian music with a contemporary soundscape through an electronic sound design created from prerecorded and live processed vocalizations.

Highly stylized physicality from the performer draws from everyday gestures of cooking soup, such as stirring, pouring, chopping, grabbing objects, stillness, and movements from Iranian mourning rituals, abstracted through extreme shifts in physical duration, tempo, shape and size, while confined to a small area.

SALT features Guerilla Opera’s co-founding artist and Artistic Director Aliana de la Guardia in dynamic solo performances with a compact but powerful creative team of Deniz Khateri (Writer, Director, and Animator), Nuozhou Wang (Video Projection Designer), and Keithlyn Parkmen (Lighting Designer and Associate Producer).

The 2022 Ice Factory Festival is the 29th annual edition of an Obie Award-winning summer festival of new work hosted by the New Ohio Theatre. Every summer they invite the most exciting companies to present their latest projects in an environment of generosity, dialogue, and inspiration. The Ice Factory is a place where artists can take risks, try out new ideas, and bring their projects to a new level. Plays introduced at The Ice Factory have gone on to garner Drama Desk nominations, Obie Awards, Audience First Awards in Edinburgh, Off-Broadway productions, commercial runs, and national and international tours. Learn more about the 29th annual Ice Factory Festival at newohiotheatre.org/ice-factory/.

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ABOUT GUERILLA OPERA

Guerilla Opera is a BIPOC and feminist organization, Boston's only experimental chamber opera ensemble, and one of only a few in the world who focus exclusively on presenting new works. One of Boston’s most exciting young companies creating brave new works and founded in 2007, the ensemble has accumulated a repertoire of over 40 new works by the most exciting composers of our generation. In daring performances, they have garnered a national reputation for innovative contemporary opera, with The Boston Globe raving that “radical exploration remains the cornerstone of everything it does.”

This artist-led ensemble wields a mission to develop new experimental works custom-tailored to their ensemble of artists. With the goal to confront, examine, and question they champion cutting-edge music, immerse audiences in profound experiences, and are a model for creative authenticity and inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility (IDEA) in order to inspire, influence and amplify emerging generations of artists.

Their vision is to generate a unique body of work that ferociously confronts the status quo, eschews antiquated and stereotypical traditions of the art form of opera, examines stories through culturally focused and contemporary lenses, and brings new music to new audiences. (guerillaopera.org)

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

SALT+Bahar+Royaee+Photo+by+John+Keon+3.jpg

Born and raised in Iran, Bahar Royaee is a composer of concert and incidental music. Her compositions are a mixture of timbral and sound-based atmospheric structures, interspersed with lyrical influences derived from her Iranian background. Her works have been performed worldwide, including Italy, Greece, Germany, Canada, Iran, and the USA. Bahar was recently recognized as a runner-up in National Sawdust's 2018-19 Hildegard Competition. Other awards include the Roger Sessions Memorial Composition Award, Walter W. Harp Music & Society Award, John Bavicchi Memorial Prize, and the Korourian Electroacoustic Award. Bahar received her M.M. in composition from Boston Conservatory, where she studied with Marti Epstein and Felipe Lara, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. from CUNY where she studies under Jason Eckardt and Suzanne Farrin.

Trained in her hometown, Tehran, Deniz Khateri (Writer, Director, Animator) is an actor, director, playwright, shadow puppetry artist and animator based in New York. Her works experiment with form and explore the unique characteristics of her chosen mediums. Deniz has performed extensively in Tehran, Boston and New York. As an actor, she has performed with companies including: Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, the Center at West Park, ArtsEmerson, Central Square Theater, Underground Railway Theater, Boston University, Apollinaire Theatre Company, among others. Her plays have been performed in several national and international festivals. In the realm of puppetry and object performance, was hand-selected to perform her new work, ”The Cellos’ Dialogue”, in the Exponential Festival and NY Fringe Puppetry Festival. In it she experiments using a musical instrument as a puppet. Deniz has designed shadow puppetry visuals for several contemporary classical composers and is excited to return to Guerilla Opera for “Salt”, for which she is the librettist as well as film and stage director, after previous collaborations on Papillon featuring “Sept Papillon” by Kaija Saariajo and Rumplestiltskin by Marti Epstein. In addition to her work in live theater, Deniz has won the NYFA award for her animated web series, “Diasporan”, for which she is the writer, director and animator, and explores the daily struggles of immigrants. (www.denizkhateri.com)

Nuozhou Wang 王诺舟 (Video Projection Designer is a Chinese filmmaker, sculptor, and video artist based in the East Coast of the USA. Her work, featuring women characters invariably, explores gender, class, beauty, and transitional space. Nuozhou has engaged in the creation of works presented at various venues including the Museum of Modern Art, Pioneer Works, and Art Basel. She has associate directed, filmed, and animated numerous cinematic and experimental operas discussing immigration, assimilation, Asian, Asian-American, BIPOC experiences, including La Bohème (2021), Ofelia’s Life Dream (2020), ELLIS (2021), and SALT (2021). Nuozhou received her BFA in Sculpture from Rhode Island School of Design in 2020.

Aliana de la Guardia (soprano and Artistic Director) is a Cuban-American artist with a multifaceted career as a soprano vocalist, entrepreneur, actor, and educator. A co-founding artist and Artistic Director of Guerilla Opera, Aliana has 15 years of experience leading this Boston-based performing ensemble and produced many newly commissioned operas with roles tailor-made for her ferocious stage presence and garnered acclaim for her “dazzling flights of virtuosity” (Gramophone) in “vocally fearless” performances that are “fizzing with theatrical commitment” (The Boston Globe). A graduate of the Boston Conservatory and consummate interpreter of new classical concert repertoire, she has enjoyed collaborations with many ensembles featuring today’s most eminent composers with American Lyric Theater, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Boston New Music Festival, Dinosaur Annex, Enigma Chamber Opera, Ludovico Ensemble, Monadnock Music, New Gallery Concert Series, the PARMA Festival, Transient Canvas, and Winsor Music, among others. As a recording artist, she can be heard on Navona and Ravello Records. Aliana can also be heard on classical label imprints of PARMA Recordings, BMOP Sound, and on independent labels.

Her work as a Latinx arts leader advocates inclusivity and multicultural collaboration. In her local community, she served on the 2020 Haverhill Multicultural Festival planning committee. With accumulated experience in arts administration, she has received accolades that put her at the forefront of the next generation of arts leadership including the OPERA America Mentorship Program for Women in Opera, and a Public Art Learning Fund grant award from the New England Foundation for the Arts to mentor with Double Edge Theatre. As an educator, she has been a featured artist at Harvard University, Lawrence Conservatory, Vermont College of Fine Arts, University of Memphis, and served on the performance faculty at Hubbard Hall Opera Theater for three seasons, as well as in 2021 at the New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project Regional Dance Development Initiative. She is the owner and founder of Dirty Paloma Voice Studio in Haverhill, MA, treasurer of Granite State National Association of Teachers of Singing. Other guest speaking engagements include roundtable discussions sponsored by Washington National Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Boston Singers Resource, Classical Singer Convention, and National Opera Association Convention. ( (alianadelaguardia.com)