United States Prototype Festival 2026 (4) – Art Bath; Michael Gordon, What to Wear: New York, 16 &17.1.2026. (RP)
The 2026 Prototype Festival ended with all-embracing eclecticism in Art Bath, a multidisciplinary salon-style soiree, and a jolt from Michael Gordon and Richard Foreman’s What to Wear. The latter was, in fact, more of a controlled explosion, still totally mind-boggling 20 years after its premiere.
Founded by Elizabeth Yilmaz and Mara Driscoll in 2022, Art Bath reimagines the artistic salons of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The venue for this Art Bath experience was artXnyc in the Meatpacking District which 20 years ago housed one of New York’s hottest clubs. Now, performances spilled over the two floors of the venue where chairs were optional and cocktails flowed. On display were creations by the Downtown bon vivant and all-around creative provocateur Machine Dazzle, who was also creating works of art in real time.
Art Bath presents world-class artists, including opera singers Anthony Roth Costanzo, Will Liverman, Davóne Tines and Christian Van Horn. The artists for this salon were a more eclectic mix, but equally prominent on the international scene. To one degree or another, they are the sort who like to push and blur boundaries. More importantly, these artists can mesmerize an audience.
Lisel (aka Eliza Bagg) is an experimental vocalist and composer who has appeared in venues such as Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and Carnegie Hall in solo performances, chamber music and opera. For Art Bath, Lisel combined her otherworldly voice, amplified and transformed through electronic processing, with video imagery of primarily natural scenes. She wasn’t so much a performer as a medium who drew the audience into a contemplative space through the ever-changing colors and moods she created visually and musically.
Matthew Jamal is a New York–based performance artist and composer who recently performed as a featured cellist and dancer on a six-month world tour with Madonna. As a teenager, he was a street performer in Washington and New York, later earning a degree in Classical and Jazz Double Bass Performance from the Manhattan School of Music. Attired in black and surrounded by an audience seated on the floor, Jamal improvised a musical journey that began with the fluid, immersive sounds of Jimi Hendrix and landed somewhere near Bach.
Violinist Isabelle Ai Durrenberger is one of the artists reimagining and reinvigorating chamber music. She was recently appointed first violinist of the renowned Aeolus Quartet and served as a 2023-25 fellow of Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect. In three solo works, she displayed her silvery tone and consummate musicianship. Chelsea Ainsworth and Jess Smith of Dual Rivet captured in movement the emotions that Durrenberger expressed in her playing.
In a just world, Durrenberger’s metallic silver dress would have won the fashion sweepstakes, but she lost out to Jasmine Rice Labeija’s explosion of white. The drag diva and operatic tenor shot to fame on Britain’s Got Talent, where her performance of ‘Never Enough’ from The Greatest Showman earned her a Golden Buzzer endorsement and a spot in the finals. The diva opened with ‘I Feel Pretty’ from West Side Story, followed by ‘Juliette’s Waltz’ from Gounod’s opera. In between, she cracked jokes, engaged in banter with the audience and harpooned the Trump administration in high drag-queen style. Maurice Ivy and Mathew Fedorek were fawning sidekicks who danced like the dickens. She ended with ‘Nessun dorma’, the aria with which she conquered Britain’s Got Talent. Victory was hers.
If one left Art Bath dazzled by Jasmine Rice Labeija, one emerged astounded from What to Wear. The comedic post-rock opera sprang from the imagination of the late Richard Foreman, the iconoclastic playwright and impresario, who founded The Ontological-Hysteric Theater. He won multiple Obie Awards (Off-Broadway Theater Awards) and was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship or ‘genius grant’, bestowed for extraordinary originality and dedication in any creative field. Foreman’s libretto features a multitude of Madeline X’s who live in a depressing world where appearance matters more than anything. Ugly ducklings are rejected by the fashion police, and the sole concern is what to wear. There is also a gigantic duck that plays golf. Don’t begin to try to make sense of it, but the purposelessness of such an existence strikes a chord. What to Wear has a point to make and does so.
Michael Gordon set Foreman’s libretto to music at his request. He scored it for four principal singers (one male and three female), a small women’s chorus and seven instrumentalists. The music is frenetic and fast charging, intended not to aid comprehension but to amaze with its unremitting flow of orchestral colors and clock-like rhythms.
Prototype reconstructed Foreman’s original staging and production from its 2005 premiere. The set is a surrealist wonder. The stage is separated from the audience by large sheets of plexiglass, and the visuals included walls hung with paintings, a mix of golf clubs, skulls, a tank-like vehicle, a jeweled box and ducks. There were wooden ducks to be ridden and a glistening glazed roasted one that was paraded about on a platter.
The frenetic staging was executed with military precision. The institutional sensibilities carried over into the costumes for the four lead performers, which blurred the boundary between those of Soviet-style waitresses and women’s prison guards. More elegant finery was to be seen, as well as tartan-clad ensemble members wearing headpieces topped by colorful pompoms.
What to Wear is a true ensemble piece, with no characters of which to speak. The performers sang Foreman’s repetitive text with precision and at times with a sinister glee. They moved with equal purpose, creating a visual hyperactivity perfectly in sync with the music. Alan Pierson led Bang on a Can All-Stars in a performance that was pristine, witty and driven.
There came a point where you wondered when it would end. And it did, with performers singing ‘Nothing changes’ and ‘Honey on lips lick them’.
Rick Perdian
Featured Image: What to Wear © Stephanie Berger
Art Bath: artXnyc, New York, 16.1.2026.
Production:
Curators – Mara Driscoll, Liz Yilmaz
Choreographer – Matthew Steffens
Performers:
Lisel – experimental vocalist & composer
Machine Dazzle – phenom multidisciplinary artist
Matthew Jamal – composer & cellist
Isabelle Ai Durrenberger – violinist
Maurice Ivy and Mathew Fedorek – dancers
Jasmine Rice Labeija – drag diva & operatic tenor
Dual Rivet – Chelsea Ainsworth and Jess Smith
Michael Gordon, Richard Foreman, What to Wear: Bang on a Can All-Stars / Alan Pierson (conductor). BAM Strong Harvey Theater, Brooklyn, 17.1.2026.
Production:
Creator – Richard Foreman
Director – Roderick Murray
Co-creative director – Annie B. Parson
Technical director & Consultant – Michael Darling
Creative director – Paul Lazar
Costumes – E. B. Brook
Performers:
Special guest – St. Vincent
Soprano 1 – Sarah Frei
Soprano 2 – Sophie Delphis
Mezzo-soprano – Hai-Ting Chin
Tenor – Morgan Mastrangelo
Vocal ensemble – Weiyu Wang, Kaileigh Riess, Leilah Rosen, Kira Dills-Desurra, Jordan Jones, Zen Wu
Movement captains – Devika Wickremesinghe, Lindy Fines, Hallie Chametzky, Lilly Lorber, Annika Mankin, Celeste Goldes, Addie Levandowski, Chloe Claudel