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Ghost Quartet

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Music, Lyrics and Text by Dave Malloy
Directed by Annie Tippe

October 5, 2017—November 5, 2017

Please be advised that Ghost Quartet is a 21+ production. Photo ID will be required, no exceptions.

Due to the limited run, ticket exchanges cannot be accommodated.

A cancellation line for all performances of GHOST QUARTET begins 2 hours prior to curtain, tickets are full price, subject to availability, and will be sold on a first-come, first-served basis. Please be advised that the cancellation line is outside the theatre, so please dress accordingly.
Read Synopsis

GHOST QUARTET is a haunted song cycle about love, death and whisky. A camera breaks and four friends drink, in four interwoven narratives spanning seven centuries: a warped fairy tale about two sisters, a treehouse astronomer and a lazy evil bear; a retelling of Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”; a purgatorial intermezzo about Scheherazade; and a contemporary fable about a subway murder. Murder ballads, doo-wop, jazz noise, and raucous campfire drinking songs collide in this surreal chamber musical from Dave Malloy, composer of Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812. Featuring Comet stars Brittain Ashford and Gelsey Bell, cellist Brent Arnold, designer Christopher Bowser and director Annie Tippe.

Developed & Arranged by Ghost Quartet:
Brent Arnold, Brittain Ashford, Gelsey Bell and Dave Malloy
Production & Lighting Design by Christopher Bowser

CREATIVE / CAST

  • Brittain Ashford

    Performer/Musician

    Brittain Ashford (vocals, autoharp, keyboard, percussion) is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, performer and songwriter. She fronts the Brooklyn-based band Prairie Empire, co-created the BCAT & CTOWN Variety Show, and can be found performing in the various basements and bars of New York. She was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award for her role as Sonya in the acclaimed Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, a role she originated at Ars Nova and reprised on Broadway in 2016. brittainashford.com.

  • Gelsey Bell

    Performer/Musician

    Gelsey Bell (vocals, Celtic harp, metallophone, accordion, percussion) is a New-York-based singer, songwriter and scholar. She has released multiple albums (most recently Ciphony) and her work has been presented internationally. She was awarded a 2017 Foundation for Contemporary Arts music/sound grant, was a resident artist at Roulette in 2015/16, and her song cycle Bathroom Songs was included in PS1’s 2015 Greater New York exhibit. She is a core member of thingNY and Varispeed, and originated the role of Princess Mary for Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812  (from Ars Nova to Broadway). She has worked with numerous performance creators, including Robert Ashley, Matthew Barney and Jonathan Bepler, Ne(x)tworks, Kimberly Bartosik, Yasuko Yokoshi, Gregory Whitehead, John King, Chris Cochrane and Fast Forward (as the Chutneys), Kate Soper and Rick Burkhardt. Gelsey also has a PhD from New York University in Performance Studies, and is the Critical Acts Co-editor for TDR/The Drama Review and the Reviews Editor for The Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies. gelseybell.com.

  • Brent Arnold

    Performer/Musician

    Brent Arnold (vocals, cello, guitar, dulcimer, erhu, percussion) is a cellist and composer. His albums of original music include Night, Exquisite and An Albatross And A Half. He composed the cello music for Louis C.K.’s TV show “Louie,” and has worked with The Antlers, Filastine, Reggie Watts, Baby Copperhead, Eyvind Kang, Prairie Empire, DJ/Rupture, Lullabies for Falling Empires, Modest Mouse and Jherek Bischoff, among many others. Brent studied with cellist Walter Gray of the Kronos Quartet and jazz violinist Michael White. brentarnoldmusic.com.

  • Dave Malloy

    Composer/Writer/Musician

    Dave Malloy (composer/writer, vocals, piano, keyboards, ukulele, percussion) is a composer/writer/performer/orchestrator/sound designer. He has written eleven musicals, including Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, an electropop opera based on a slice of Tolstoy’s War & Peace (12 Tony nominations, including Best Musical, Score, Book, and Orchestrations); Ghost Quartet, a song cycle about love, death, and whiskey; Preludes, a musical fantasia set in the hypnotized mind of Sergei Rachmaninoff; Three Pianos, a drunken romp through Schubert’s “Winterreise;” Black Wizard/Blue Wizard, an escapist RPG fantasy; Beowulf—A Thousand Years of Baggage, an anti-academia rock opera; Beardo, a retelling of the Rasputin myth; Sandwich, a musical about killing animals; and Clown Bible, Genesis to Revelation told through clowns. He has won two Obie Awards, a Theater World Award, the Richard Rodgers Award, an ASCAP New Horizons Award, and a Jonathan Larson Grant, and has been a MacDowell fellow and Composer-in-Residence at Ars Nova. Future projects include an adaptation of Moby-Dick. He lives in Brooklyn. davemalloy.com.

Dave Malloy / Composer/Writer/Musician

Dave Malloy (composer/writer, vocals, piano, keyboards, ukulele, percussion) is a composer/writer/performer/orchestrator/sound designer. He has written eleven musicals, including Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, an electropop opera based on a slice of Tolstoy’s War & Peace (12 Tony nominations, including Best Musical, Score, Book, and Orchestrations); Ghost Quartet, a song cycle about love, death, and whiskey; Preludes, a musical fantasia set in the hypnotized mind of Sergei Rachmaninoff; Three Pianos, a drunken romp through Schubert’s “Winterreise;” Black Wizard/Blue Wizard, an escapist RPG fantasy; Beowulf—A Thousand Years of Baggage, an anti-academia rock opera; Beardo, a retelling of the Rasputin myth; Sandwich, a musical about killing animals; and Clown Bible, Genesis to Revelation told through clowns. He has won two Obie Awards, a Theater World Award, the Richard Rodgers Award, an ASCAP New Horizons Award, and a Jonathan Larson Grant, and has been a MacDowell fellow and Composer-in-Residence at Ars Nova. Future projects include an adaptation of Moby-Dick. He lives in Brooklyn. davemalloy.com.

Annie Tippe / Director

Directing includes Dave Malloy’s Ghost Quartet; Bess Wohl’s Continuity (New Stages at The Goodman Theatre); Anne Washburn’s When the Tanks Break (Drama League); Washeteria (Soho Rep); Aaron/Marie (w. Rachel Chavkin, Incoming! @ Under the Radar); Far Away (Harvard University); Cowboy Bob (Yale Institute for Music Theatre Summer Lab; Ars Nova) and I Heard Sex Noises (Ars Nova). Annie served as the associate director for Present Laughter on Broadway (dir. Moritz von Stuelpnagel). Associate Director for The TEAM’S touring productions of Mission Drift and RoosevElvis (dir. Rachel Chavkin) and Gabriel Kahane’s The Ambassador (BAM; dir. John Tiffany). Ars Nova’s 2016 Director-in-Residence, Drama League Fall Directing Fellow, WTF Directing Corps, New Georges Audrey Resident. annietippe.com.

Christopher Bowser / Designer

Christopher Bowser (designer) is a production designer based in Brooklyn. He is a member of Pipeline Theatre Company (The Gray Man and upcoming Folk Wandering) and lighting designer for Cesar Alvarez’s Noise and Elementary Spacetime Show. Scenic and lighting designs seen at Abrons Arts, HERE, The Bushwick Starr, The McKittrick Hotel, Ars Nova, Classic Stage Company, JACK, ART Oberon, The Curran Theater in SF, Cape Rep Theater and festivals in Warsaw, Edinburgh, and Nottingham UK. BFA: NYU Tisch at Playwrights Horizons Theatre School. christopherjbowser.com.

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