Our Mission
eARTHOPEra is a nonprofit organization devoted to creating transformative community experiences through live immersive performance. Blending experimental theater, original music drawing from avant-garde, sacred, ancient, and global traditions, performance art, mythic storytelling, and embodied movement, the organization creates public artistic experiences that explore the sacred, deepen human connection, and cultivate reverence for the natural world.
eARTHOPEra develops and supports innovative artistic practice that bridges ancient wisdom and contemporary expression—-envisioning a culture in which art functions not only as entertainment, but as a vital communal practice capable of inspiring healing, belonging, remembering, and transformative engagement with the world.
Through its artistic programming and public initiatives, eARTHOPEra supports the creation, development, and presentation of original works by Hudson Valley-based composer and interdisciplinary artist Elizabeth Clark and an extensive network of community collaborators—musicians, performance artists, dancers, choreographers, and visual artists of various ages, cultures, and backgrounds. The organization cultivates artistic partnerships, engages diverse audiences, supports community-based performances, develops recordings, publications, and archival projects, preserves and presents artistic materials, and commissions and brings new and unfinished creative works to completion.
The corporation is organized exclusively for charitable and educational purposes within the meaning of Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
Previous immersive theater public productions:
Currently in it’s 6th year of performance in the Hudson Valley region, 'Seeds Under Nuclear Winter: An Earth Opera’ is a recreation of spiritual visions, dreams, and mythic stories through world and sacred music, performance art, movement, and light experiments—shared as an immersive and multi-sensory community experience.
The Earth Opera takes place in a post-apocalyptic atmosphere, and centers around finding light, beauty, and hope in the darkest times – and on our deep connection with all living things, our planet, and with each other.
Orchestrated for harp, ethereal voices, Andean instruments, Indonesian gamelan, strings, choir, drones, dulcimer, piano, gongs, brass, ancient Celtic carnyx dragon horn, bagpipes, waterphone, pipe organ, and a giant cast of between 25-40 Hudson Valley performance artists, the 'Earth Opera’ steps into otherworldly realms and unfolds upon a non-linear and timeless path, similar to the way we dream.
Composed and developed by Elizabeth Clark during a four-year artist residency at Byrdcliffe Artists Colony in Woodstock NY in a tiny little cabin on a mountain—-the Earth Opera has continued evolving over time through the collective dreaming of a vibrant and collaborative community of performance artists and musicians. The Earth Opera has been performed annually in the Hudson Valley from 2021-2026, including (literally) deep inside of the Earth in the vast natural amphitheater of ‘The Widow Jane Mine’ (site-specific location the project was initially designed for), as well as adaptations for Cathedral spaces (Old Dutch Church, Kingston—utilizing entire wall of pipe-organ as drone), Byrdcliffe Theater (Black Box Theater), and for an intimate performance at Graveside Variety (Amanda Palmer’s pop-up venue in Woodstock NY). The Earth Opera continues to offer transformative and otherworldly immersive community experiences through this living and evolving body of work.
For video, photos, and recordings from ‘Seeds Under Nuclear Winter’ visit: www.earth-opera.com