The Marsh Festival of New Musical Voices 2021
Solo Performance. Dance. Musical.
Independent Film Adaptation
APHRODISIA
October 2 at 5pm | October 8 at 7:30pm
October 10 at 2pm
The Marsh Berkeley
starring STEPHANIE WEISMAN and WEI WANG
composed with and arranged by ELLEN HOFFMAN
narrated by DEBORAH GWINN
sung by VOCI WOMEN’S VOCAL ENSEMBLE
conducted by JUDE NAVARI
script consultants DEBORAH GWINN and DAVID FORD
About the Film
A Painter. A Poet. A house on stilts.
The Dance. The Music.
A vivid period of love and loss, a brilliant moment between heaven and earth,
captured and set to music and movement.
APHRODISIA is a tone poem written by Stephanie Weisman, reimagined and choreographed for film by virtuoso dancer Wei Wang, principal dancer with the San Francisco Ballet. Wang created this film adaptation over a year long collaboration with Weisman layering the past with the present.
APHRODISIA is about Weisman’s time spent with a master painter living in a house on stilts above a saltwater marsh looking out over Delaware Bay. He’s 50. He paints still lifes. She’s 30. She spends her days on the marsh, writing exploring, questioning, ruminating about motherhood, career, being an artist; all intensified by the couple’s isolation and proximity to nature.
It was here too, that she learned about the ferocity and fecundity of the marsh and its inhabitants.
Dancer and filmmaker, Wei Wang reimagined Aphrodisia as a film, choreographing the tone poem’s dance for himself and Weisman.
The soundtrack, from the original 2006 opera, is composed by Weisman, with musical direction, arrangement and additional composition by Ellen Hoffman, sung by Voci Women’s Vocal Ensemble and accompanied by a 4-piece chamber ensemble, conducted by Jude Navari, with narration by Deborah Gwinn.
About the Performers
Stephanie Weisman founded and has been the Artistic/Executive Director of The Marsh since its inception in 1989. Under her leadership, The Marsh has grown from a one-night-a-week performance series to producing 600s shows annually at its San Francisco and Berkeley venues. With the onset of COVID, she founded MarshStream, The Marsh’s digital broadcast platform, broadcasting 500 shows during its first year. For her work at The Marsh she has received the Meritorious Achievement Award from Bay Area Theatre Critic’s Circle and was named A Local Hero by the San Francisco Bay Guardian. The plays she has produced have since been presented in theaters both nationally and internationally and have received numerous awards including: more than a dozen Critics Circle and Dramalog Awards; two of the prestigious Will Glickman Playwright Awards as well as the National Theater Critics Emerging Playwright Award. Stephanie has a BA in Psychology and a MA in Creative Writing from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Under the mentorship of Robert Creeley, she edited the arts journal, The Black Mountain II Review for three years and developed and taught a class, Small Press Publishing which is the model for The Marsh’s Performance Initiative program. Her journalism, prose and poetry have been published nationally and she has developed, presented and been awarded grants for 3 solo performances, Dancemasters, Breed & Rescue, Planet Do Re Mi and an opera, Aphrodisia on which this film is based.
Chinese dancer Wei Wang trained at Beijing Dance Academy and San Francisco Ballet School. He was named an apprentice of San Francisco Ballet in 2012 and joined the company as a member of the corps de ballet in 2013. He was promoted to soloist in 2016 and principal in 2018. Roles with the company include the Creature in Frankenstein (Scarlett), Within the Golden Hour and Cinderella (Wheeldon), Basilio in Don Quixote (Tomasson/Possokhov), Prince Desiré and Bluebird in The Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, The Nutcracker, Romeo and Juliet and Swan Lake (Tomasson), Manifesto and Stone and Steel (Thatcher), Coppélia (Balanchine), Onegin (Cranko), Glass Pieces, Opus 19/The Dreamer and Other Dances (Robbins). He has created roles in Anima Animus (Dawson), Pas/Parts 2016 (Forsythe), Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, In the Countenance of Kings (Peck) and Björk Ballet (Pita).
Ellen Hoffman, has directed the Berkeley Broadway Singers, has taught in the music and theater departments at Contra Costa College, Her music has been performed nationally by groups including the Atlanta Symphony, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Vallejo Symphony, the Oakland Symphony Chorus, the UC Berkeley Chamber Ensemble, the University of Indiana Chamber Singers. Ms. Hoffman has a ten-year association with the Oakland East Bay Symphony and Music Director Michael Morgan.
Deborah Gwinn appeared at The Marsh in Don Quixote with Jim Cave; also with Merle Kessler and Joshua Raoul Brody in Don’t Even Think of Parking Here.” She is perhaps best remembered for her 12-minute West Side Story. Gwinn has long been affiliated with Bay Area groups: the Blake Street Hawkeyes, Duck’s Breath Mystery Theater, and Overtone Industries. Gwinn currently resides in Vermont where she produced Shakespeare in the Barn.
David Ford has been collaborating on new and unusual theatre for three decades and has been an artist-in-residence at The Marsh for most of that time. The San Francisco press has variously called him “the solo performer maven“, “the monologue maestro”, “the dean of solo performance”, and “the solo performer’s best friend” and a week rarely goes by when residents of the Bay Area can not enjoy one of his productions.
Jude Navari holds music composition degrees from the Eastman School of Music (B.M.) and University of California at Berkeley (M.A. and Ph.D.), where he also studied conducting with Marika Kuzma and Jung Ho Pak. At Skyline College, Jude teaches music theory, musicianship, class voice, class piano, and composition in addition to conducting the Skyline College Concert Choir. He has also taught piano and music theory at U.C. Berkeley, and over the past 20 years, he has conducted several Bay Area choral groups.
Voci Women’s Vocal Ensemble. ChorusVoci Women’s Vocal Ensemble, founded in 1991, is located in the San Francisco Bay Area. A champion of music by and for women, from all parts of the world and every century, Voci has won high praise from critics and choral musicians for its lush, ethereal sound. The group’s size of 24–26 allows for an unusual intimacy among chorus members and between chorus and audience. Voci singers share a passionate love of music, fierce dedication, and deep community commitment. Voci is dedicated to musical excellence. Through commissions and premieres of new works by local composers, Voci seeks to encourage, foster, and showcase new and rarely performed music in a diverse repertoire of both modern and treasured classical choral repertoire. Voci also seeks collaborations that challenge and expand its capacities and potential
Instrumentalists
(Aphrodisia Performance 2006)
Nora Adachi, Clarinet
Dina Weinshelbaum, Cello
Paul Rhodes, Cello
Ellen Gronningen, Violin
Erin Irvine, Bassoon
Voci Ensemble Member
(Aphrodisia Performance 2006)
Joan Bell, Elizabeth Brashers, Kate Buckelew, Vicky Faulk, Sally Goodman, Alison Howard, Marian King, Catherine MacGuiness, Katherine Marble, Judy Margulis, Kathleen Merchant, Terry Meyers, Margot Murtaugh, Susan Marquez Owen, Debbie Rosen Kanofsky, Susan Sands, Vilma Schroeder, Fran Smith, Laura Stern-Grossman, Jennifer Vlahos Powell.
Special Thanks
Thank you to the incredible support of my husband, Richard DiLeo and sister Lisa Tama Weisman and Aphrodisia, The Opera, Executive Producers, Cynthia Dwork & David Fuchs, and Sponsors, Gillian & Philip Armour, Gail & Eric Buchbinder, Mary Anne & Rob Cook, Alice Doctor, Regina Phelps, Pamela & John Walker, Julia Walker, Hubert Weisman, and the Zellerbach Family Foundation.
Show Info
Tickets: $20 – $35 General Seating sliding scale
$50 & $100 Reserved Seating
Festival Pass $50
October 2, 8 & 10, 2021 | The Marsh Berkeley
Saturday at 5:00pm – Friday at 7:30pm – Sunday at 2:00pm
60 minutes | Ages 13+
For more information on the sliding scale ticketing policy, late seating and reserved seating please click here.
Health, Safety and COVID-19 Information
Our commitment to our patrons
Proof of vaccination along with valid ID
Face Coverings are required