SHOW DON’T TELL
ABOUT
Formed in 2013 by artistic director Daron Hagen and named after Orson Welles' Mercury Theater, the New Mercury Collective exists to create and sustain a laboratory for artistic exploration, creative risk-taking, and performance in which its members can collaborate on the creation and performance of post-genre works combining theater, music, and emerging technology for audiences of all types underpinned by a fierce commitment to social justice and civic activism.
For ten years, the TNMC has been developing The Bardo Trilogy, a sequence of operafilms devoted to the exploration of the liminal zone between life and art, and life and what comes after. I Hear America Singing, the third and final installment, wrapped in Pittsburgh at the Rauh Studio Theater and various other settings in Pittsburgh in March 2024 and is currently in post-production for September 2025 release to festivals. Currently still on the international film festival circuit is 9-10: Love Before the Fall, an operafilm for six characters set in a restaurant in New York City’s Little Italy the evening before the fall of the World Trade Center. Orson Rehearsed, the collective's first project (resulting in a web installation, an Operafilm, and a staged opera integrating film), is currently streaming internationally on all of the major video platforms.
The Bardo Trilogy: three films about people dealing with the liminal zone between life and art, being and not.
“We’re going for something new here together that combines the emotional impact of cutting-edge live operatic performance with the psychological verisimilitude of gritty fourth-wall-demolishing auteur filmmaking. In short, neither film nor opera, but images storyboarded, directed and edited to the rhythm of the score by the composer himself, brought vividly to life by brave, fiercely-committed performers.”
