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I developed and directed this alternative opera with composer John Glover, librettist Kelley Rourke and music director Mila Henry. In the heyday of the seventies underground, Bobby DeSoto and Mary Whittaker – passionate, idealistic, and in love – design a series of radical protests against the Vietnam War. When one action goes wrong, the course of their lives is forever changed. The two must erase their past, forge new identities, and never see one another again.

Now it is the 1990s. Mary lives in the suburbs with her fifteen-year-old son, Jason, who spends hours immersed in the music of his mother’s generation. A few towns away, an aging hippie calling himself Nash presides over an anarchist bookstore, drawing the disaffected youth of the next generation into a shifting series of “groups” and “collectives.”

Shifting between the protests in the 1970s and the consequences of those choices in the 1990s, Eat the Document explores the connection between the two eras — their language, technology, music, and activism.

Eat The Document premiered in January 2025 at HERE as part of the Prototype Festival with a critically acclaimed, sold-out run.

“As a production, it’s stunning. The work done by Marting and the design team creates a built environment so rich with detail that the narrative can’t even fully make use of it… Marting’s direction of the ensemble creates the real impression of a crowd from a cast of eight, with the mostly multiple cast performers doing sharp character work in small sketches. What composer John Glover, librettist Kelley Rourke, and director Kristin Marting have created in Eat the Document is nothing if not sharply modern, urgently political”. – Exeunt NY

Photos by Maria Baranova

Performed outdoors in each of NYC’s five boroughs in September 2021, this solo work with Suzi Takahashi asks how we safeguard our civil rights framed through the lens of Japanese-American identity, using Japanese storytelling forms, like kamishibai, along with family history and current events. Representing the relocation of Japanese Americans during WWII, each audience member receives a tag and suitcase, inside of which is a wireless headset and a family photo album. Each unique family photo album documents the problematic history of Asian people in the U.S. and the rise in anti-Asian violence during the pandemic. The Story Box asks audience members to reflect together on the stories in each suitcase, and they are invited to leave a story of their own behind for future audiences.

The Story Box was produced by HERE and developed with support from Alfred University, Bethany Arts Community, Bristol Valley Theatre and National Park of Women’s Rights. The premiere was co-presented with Japan Society, Bronx Academy of Art and Dance, and NYC Economic Development Corporation and through partnerships with Asian American Arts Alliance, Chocolate Factory, Flushing Town Hall, National Lighthouse Museum, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island Arts, and Target Margin Theater.

“The piece toggles between the forcible relocation of Japanese Americans to concentration camps through the Second World War to the hate crimes of the past two years, with a through line of personal memoir.  There are a lot of moving parts… and there’s a lot to think about.” –The New Yorker

Photos by Paula Court

Words on the Street is a mystery, a ”what-done-it,” a crime in which all humanity is complicit. Baby is abducted. The Seven Deadly Sins call a summit meeting at which they play out their power struggle. Pandemonium reigns in a dystopian world teeming with falsehood and plagued by threat.

This book of poetry, written by Anna Rabinowitz, has been transformed into a hybrid performance event, collaboratively conceived and developed by the writer, director Kristin Marting, video designer Lianne Arnold, and the late composer Matt Marks (1980-2018). The performance features music direction by Mila Henry, additional music compositions by Lainie Fefferman, John Glover, Mary Kouyoumdjian, David T. Little, Kamala Sankaram, Caroline Shaw, and Randall Woolf. Our team also included lighting designer Lucrecia Briceno,  costume designer Kate Fry, scenic designer Arnulfo Maldonado,  as well as a diverse ensemble of 7 performers, including acclaimed soprano Lauren Flanigan, Sumaya Ali, Paul An, Caitlin Cisco, John Kelly, Paul Pinto, and Adrian Rosas.

The show was developed over two years with support from The Drama League, HERE and New Georges. It premiered at Baruch Performing Arts Center in a limited engagement from October 26, 2018– November 4, 2018.

More info on the show here.

Photos by Paula Court.