Call for Singers for The Machine Stops

Iowa City - A staged reading of The Machine Stops, a new guitar opera, will be performed Tuesday evening, June 17, sponsored by the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. The opera has 6 roles: one female and one male lead, and four smaller roles.

If you are interested in working with Chicago director Beau O'Reilly, local musician/composer John Lake, and Iowa City poet Cecile Goding for one rehearsal weekend, culminating in one wacky performance, please let us know. Music is available now. Stipends will be paid. First rehearsal: Friday, June 13.

The Machine Stops is based on a 1909 science-fiction short story by E.M. Forster, in which he imagines a world where people are isolated from the natural world, and from each other. They communicate solely through the technology Forster could only imagine. The devices of his imagination are eerily familiar to us now, some 100 years after.

Composer John Lake describes the music as Sondheim meets Stravinsky meets Zappa meets Porter meets Captain Beefheart, with a little Hendrix, a little gospel, a little blues.

Contact: Cecile Goding: cecile-goding@mchsi.com