Building a Bridge: A New Musical and a New Model for Arts Innovation
Free event: Thursday, November 21, at 7:30pm, Morse Recital Hall, Yale University.
On Thursday, November 21, Frances Pollock, founder of Midnight Oil Collective and MOC Innovations and leader of the Arts Track at the annual Yale Innovation Summit, will present an excerpt of the new musical she is creating with lyricist and book writer Kathleen Wrinn. This musical itself is the intellectual property of one of twelve new artist-led companies that Midnight Oil Collective has launched over the past three years, in an innovative model that allows for arts IP across mediums to incubate and scale like tech startups.
As part of the evening, Pollock will share a vision for an arts ecosystem that supports artist ownership, aligns incentives between artists and the arts organizations, and positions New Haven as the center of a Silicon Valley of the Arts–and will show how The Bridge is one example of how a work can be incubated and gain traction in this new landscape.
In fact, the very story of The Bridge is itself a story of innovation–though it pulls no punches in exploring how messy and difficult that progress can be.
The Bridge is based on the true story of the woman who secretly engineered the Brooklyn Bridge. When her husband falls mysteriously ill and is unable to continue as Chief Engineer, Emily Roebling took up the reins of the most ambitious project of the age, half a century before women were allowed to vote. Set in the fractured wake of the American Civil War, the musical explores the forces that unite and divide us–across lines of gender, race, nationality, and socioeconomic status. Beginning with Emily and expanding outward to the countless unrecognized individuals who contributed to the construction of this iconic work, The Bridge shines a light on those whose lives, loves, and labors have historically been left in the shadows, asking the central questions: What does progress really look like? And who actually drives it?
The event is free for all to attend and will be followed by a reception at the Yale School of Music. Attendees can RSVP through this link: https://forms.gle/LKhFUXgd5KVF6zq18