Phantom of the Opera Digital Program

Commissioned and Presented by NYU Skirball
Theater in Quarantine’s

PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
Oct. 23 – Nov. 3
Co-Created by Joshua William Gelb & Normandy Sherwood
in collaboration with the company

CREATIVE CREDITS

Scenography by Normandy Sherwood 
Sound by Alex Hawthorn 
Mediaturgy by Shoshanah Tarkow
Direction and Video by Joshua William Gelb 

Livestream Powered by CultureHub Broadcaster

Produced by Shannon Sindelar 
Assistant Director: Madelyn Barkocy 
Social Media Manager: Kate Purdum 
Production Assistant: Tabby Muhammad

CAST

Joshua William Gelb: The Phantom
Sophie Delphis: Christine
Curtis Gillen: Raoul
Erin Amlicke: Management
Jon Levin: Management

ABOUT CULTUREHUB

CULTUREHUB CREDITS

“Livestream Powered by CultureHub Broadcaster”

CultureHub Broadcaster is an open-source platform for interactive, networked performance, developed over the past five years by CultureHub and creative coders at NYU/ITP. Designed to explore hybrid performance as its own medium, the software does not try to mimic what works in a live theater, but instead creatively  translates the joy and energy of live performance into an online space. 

CultureHub Broadcaster is designed to create a sense of ambient co-presence for online audiences, or the feeling of a communal experience in a shared virtual environment. Because it is open source, low latency, and integrates with p5.js, the platform opens new creative possibilities. Artists and presenters can customize forms of audience interaction to create live feedback loops, give them agency over the performance, or bring traces of their digital presence into the physical environment. 

Development Team:

Lead Developer / Concept: Aidan Nelson
Producer / Senior Advisor / Concept: Shawn Van Every
Concept / Creative Producer: Billy Clark, Sangmin Chae, and DeAndra Anthony
UI/UX Designer: Deron Gopie
Interactive Sketch Coders : MORAKANA, YG Zhang, and Shuang Cai
Project Manager: DeAndra Anthony 

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Theater in Quarantine is an Obie and Drama League Award winning performance laboratory dedicated to the exploration of the live theatrical experience in the digital space. TiQ has live-streamed dozens of visually distinctive, original works to its YouTube channel, working out of a closet in the East Village that’s only 8 sq feet. Our digital and hybrid programming spans genres and styles, with world premieres of new plays, new musicals, adaptations of classic texts, dance, and site-specific art installations. The work has been called “Virtuosic” by Jesse Green in the New York Times while Helen Shaw in Vulture wrote that the closet “makes confinement a virtue, a prompt to imagination.” TiQ has been presented by The Invisible Dog, New Georges, Theater Mitu, CulturalDC, Ann Arbor Summer Festival, The New York Public Library, and was a 2021 artist in residence at LaMama and CultureHub’s Experiments in Digital Storytelling.

Erin Amlicke (“Management”) is an actor, writer, and theatremaker from Nashville who has lived in many places but now calls Brooklyn home. She recently appeared as Joan in Saint Joan and Viola in Twelfth Night at Tennessee Shakespeare Company, and has performed on regional stages including Theatre at Monmouth, Greenbrier Valley Theatre, and Burning Coal Theatre Company. As a writer and deviser, her work has been presented at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival (Cannonball), Dixon Place, Burning Coal Theatre Company, and Compañía del Teatro Físico in Peru. Her solo show, Kingdom Come, premiered at the 2024 Philadelphia Fringe Festival and is currently touring. Erin co-leads Frontera Flotante, which develops and presents new site-specific performance and installation with local and international artists. She was a 2023–24 Deceleration Lab Artist with The Assembly Theater and holds an MFA in Acting from the University of Houston.
@erinamlyes | erinamlicke.com

Madelyn Barkocy (Assistant Director) (she/her) is thrilled to be working with Theatre in Quarantine again on this rendition of Phantom of the Opera! Her past work with TiQ includes Nosferatu: a 3D Symphony of Horror and [Untitled Miniature]. Madelyn graduated from Adelphi University with a BFA in Acting where she completed her undergraduate thesis on creating character through movement, taking classes with PUSH Physical Theatre and Pig Iron Theatre Company to aid in her research. Madelyn is represented by Lohne/Graham Management. She’d like to thank this wonderful team for all their trust!

Franco-American mezzo-soprano Sophie Delphis’ (“Christine”) stage roles this season include: Christine (Phantom of the Opera, Theater in Quarantine/NYU Skirball), Principal Second Soprano (What to Wear, Beth Morrison Projects/BAM), and Félicie/Adélaïde (La Belle et la Bête, Opera Paralèlle). Her recital and chamber work performances include: Fauré’s La Chanson d’Ève, Ravel’s Chansons madécasses and Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé, Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten, Saariaho’s From the Grammar of Dreams, León’s Atwood Songs, Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, and Messiaen’s Harawi. She regularly collaborates with composers, improvisers, and theater artists on new works, with American Opera Projects, BargeMusic, InfraSound Ensemble, the Why Collective, and others. She is a dancer and singer with Brooklyn Motion Capture Dance Ensemble, which combines technology, movement, and composition. Passionate about language and poetics, she is a writer, a French translator and teacher, and a doctoral candidate in performance at the Graduate Center City University of New York. In both her performing and academic work, Sophie explores the embodied process of multi-sensory experience, analysis, translation, and transformation in the creation and interpretation of words and music.

Joshua William Gelb (Co-Creator, Direction, Video, “The Phantom”) is an Obie and Drama League Award winning theater director, producer, performer, designer, and creative technologist. During the Covid shut-down, Gelb founded the critically acclaimed digital performance laboratory Theater in Quarantine, live-streaming dozens of visually distinctive, original projects to its YouTube channel from a closet in the East Village measuring only eight square  feet. Theater in Quarantine was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, Japan’s NHK Television, The New Yorker and The New York Times and has been a five–time New York Times Critic’s Pick as well as one of Vulture’s “Top 10 Best Theater Moments of 2020” and among The New York Times’ “Best Theater of 2021.” Gelb premiered Theater in Quarantine Live and In-person, their hybrid format, at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center and continues to create work for remote and in-person audiences at venues such as NYU Skirball, Under the Radar and Here Arts Center. Gelb has also been in residence at La MaMa Experimental Theater Club, CultureHub, Theater Mitu, Abrons Arts Center, and Ars Nova. He received his MFA in directing at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Drama where he graduated as a John Wells Fellow, and is a member of the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab.

Curtis Gillen is a storyteller at heart. A multi-hyphenate actor, musician, and theatre-maker who weaves movement, music, and puppetry into imaginative, handcrafted works of theatre. Off-Broadway: The Old Man and The Old Moon, Pericles (Dir. Trevor Nunn). Regional: Once, The Tale of Despereaux, The Hunter and The Bear. Film: Hairbrained. Founding member of PigPen Theatre Co., the theatre collective of actors, musicians, writers, directors, and most recently composers and lyricists of the Tony nominated Water for Elephants, now touring nationally. Proud Carnegie Mellon School of Drama alumni. @curt_mcgurt

Alex Hawthorn (Sound) (they/them) is an artist whose work flows between performance, installation, object-making, and sound-making. They use their work as a lens through which to investigate the natural world, specifically focusing on time: how we experience it, how we have codified it, and how we exist within it.  Hawthorn’s recent research has focused on timescales beyond human perception: from the geologic to the cosmic.

Their work in theater has garnered them an Obie award, LA Ovation Awards, and has been exhibited across six continents and on the Moon. They have been a company member with Theater Mitu for almost 20 years and have been a frequent collaborator with Theater in Quarantine since its inception in 2020, including Nosferatu for Skirlball in 2023. They are currently adjunct faculty at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
 www.AlexHawthorn.com  IG: @AFHawthorn

Jon Levin (“Management”) is a performer, director, puppeteer, and the co-Artistic Director of Sinking Ship Productions. Recent directing/co-creation credits include The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy (with Theater in Quarantine), at New York Theatre Workshop, for which the show earned two Drama Desk nominations including Unique Theatrical Experience, Cassandra: An Agony at the J. Paul Getty Museum, and Footnote for the End of Time (with Theater in Quarantine). Jon co-created and performed A Hunger Artist at the Connelly Theater and on tour, for which he earned two Drama Desk nominations (Outstanding Solo Performance and Outstanding Puppet Design) and was awarded Summerhall’s Lustrum Award for Excellence at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Additional SSP directing credits include Powerhouse at the New Ohio Theatre (NYTimes Critics Pick), Flatland, an EST/Sloan commission, Ocean at Mabou Mines Suite and There Will Come Soft Rains at FringeNYC (Excellence Award for Outstanding Direction). Jon is also a founding member of the Krumple Theatre company, with which he has co-directed and performed work throughout Norway and in NYC since 2014. As a puppeteer, Jon has collaborated and performed with Wakka Wakka on SAGA, Animal R.I.O.T. and The Immortal Jellyfish Girl. Jon is a graduate of the École Internationale de Théâtre de Jacques Lecoq. www.jon-levin.com.

Tabirah or “Tabby” Muhammad (Production Assistant) (SHE/THEY) is a DC-Native who was introduced to performing arts, music, and writing while living in a small town near Shenandoah, Virginia in their youth. They worked as a Production Assistant and Youth Leader for Music Future X Studios in 2020 to host virtual musical events for local artists based in the DMV. Tabby studied English and Music at the University of the District of Columbia before transferring to Adelphi University in Garden City, New York to study Creative Writing and to minor in Acting. They performed in independent short films such as Immortal Jellyfish as Shelly, Mouthwash and Pesticides as Eliza, and Take Two: Reclaiming Queer Adolescence in Adulthood as herself as well as Adelphi University’s live productions of Trojan Women and Men on Boats. After spending a couple of years working in their hometown, Tabby is elated to be back in New York and a part of Theatre in Quarantine as a production assistant for the first time. When Tabby is not working on film/theatre projects, they love to compete in writing competitions and poetry slams!”

Kate Purdum (Social Media Manager) directs and writes for/about the theatre. She moonlights alternately as a dramaturg, stage manager, producer, and zine maker. Together with Celia Krefter, she devises, directs, and designs original performance works, including HOW TO BE NORMAL AND REGULAR (Movement Research, Collapsable Hole, The Tank), MUDPIT (Movement Lab @ Barnard College), and Everything Changes, Nothing is Lost (Brick Aux). Her other recent credits include: Assistant Director, ATLAS DRUGGED (The Builders Association/NYU Skirball); Stage Manager, SUPPOSED BEAUTIFUL MADELINE HARVEY (Object Collection/La MaMa); Director, THE APPEAL (Barnard College); ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, HOUSECONCERT (Object Collection/The Brick); Associate Producer, EVELYN BROWN, A DIARY (La MaMa ETC) and Associate Producer, REDEMPTION STORY (Associates Theatre Ensemble). You can find her writing in HowlRound, Theatre and Performance Design Journal, and The Drama Review. katepurdum.com.

Normandy Sherwood (Co-Creator, Scenography) is a writer, a director, and a scenographer/costumer.  Recent work includes her curtain spectacular PSYCHIC SELF DEFENSE (2024 OBIE Award)  and Beast Visit as a part of HERE Arts Center’s  HARP residency, Scenographer/co-creator of Theater in Quarantine’s Nosferatu, a 3-D Symphony of Horror at Skirball in 2023 and scenic, prop, costume design for Two Sisters Find a Box of Lesbian Erotica in the Woods by Bailey Williams and Emma Horwitz, produced by Rattlestick/New Georges. Her theater company is The Drunkard’s Wife, its works include Madame Lynch, Tiny Hornets and Permanent Caterpillar. From 2001-2017 she was a co-artistic director of The National Theater of the United States of America (R.I.P.).  She has designed costumes for Faye Driscoll, Tina Satter/ Half Straddle, Young Jean Lee, Rachel Chavkin/Anne Washburn,  Kristin Marting. She has been an artist in residence at HERE, MacDowell, Yaddo. She’s a Clinical Associate Professor in Expository Writing at NYU and has an MFA in playwriting from Brooklyn College. Shows in the works:The Mushroom (a pageant of the forest floor), with Nikki Calonge, developing as a part of the New Georges Audrey Residency and showing at the 2026 Exponential Festival January 8-11, 2026. www.thedrunkardswife.com

Shannon Sindelar (Producer) is a director and producer based in NYC. With Theater in Quarantine: Nosferatu. She’s the current producing director for the Obie Award-winning company The Builders Association and managing producer for the composer-driven non-profit Experiments in Opera. She teaches at Barnard College and is an affiliated artist with New Georges. She serves on the advisory board for the Edward F. Albee Foundation and is a board member of the performance ensemble Object Collection. MFA: Carnegie Mellon (John Wells Directing Fellow).

Shoshanah Tarkow (Mediaturgy) is a New York based theater director, educator, and multimedia artist. Shoshanah received her BFA in Theatre Studies from Adelphi University and her MA in Performance Studies from New York University. In January 2021 Shoshanah became an associate with Jared Mezzocchi’s company ViDCo (Virtual Design Collective), and in that capacity collaborated on virtual and hybrid productions for Geffen Playhouse, BAM, Ars Nova, Princess Grace Foundation, and TheaterWorks Hartford. Additionally, Shoshanah had the honor of spearheading the virtual filming of seasons 2 & 3 of Paula Vogel’s Bard at the Gate. Shoshanah is currently working on an original podcast about the invention of the theremin with support from the Orchard Projects’ Audio Lab. 

NYU SKIRBALL

NYU Skirball holds close James Baldwin’s dictum that “artists are here to disturb the peace.” Our mission is to present adventurous, cross-disciplinary work that inspires yet provokes, confirms yet confounds, and entertains yet upends. We proudly embrace renegade artists who surprise, productions that blur aesthetic boundaries, and thought-leaders who are courageous, outrageous, and mind-blowing. We are NYU’s largest classroom. We want to feed your head.

SUPPORT

NYU Skirball’s programs are made possible in part with support from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; and the Howard Gilman Foundation; Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels; Culture Ireland; The Shubert Foundation; Collins Building Services; General Delegation of the Government of Flanders to the USA; Goethe Institut New York with support from the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany; Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs; New England Foundation for the Arts; Harkness Foundation for Dance; and Marta Heflin Foundation; as well as our valued donors through memberships, commissioning, and Allies for Arts Access Fund support.

BECOME A MEMBER

NYU Skirball Members are friends … with benefits. Members receive discounted tickets to productions, events, pre-sale opportunities, exclusive invitations, and special access to innovative artists, academics, and thought-leaders. More importantly, members support a broad range of cutting-edge performances to New York City. Memberships start at $75.

GO BEYOND THE STAGE

Discover more about the production with online interviews, essays, articles, reading lists, and many other digital resources.

NYU SKIRBALL STAFF

Director Jay Wegman
Supervisor, Lighting And Sound Emily Anderson
Ticket Operation Specialist Cliff Billings
Engagement Director J De Leon, PhD
Theater Technician Brian Emens
Company Manager Tayler Elizabeth Everts
Theater Technician George Faya
Theater Technician Angie Golightly
Operations Manager Jenny Liao
Marketing Manager Clare Lockhart
Box Office Manager Craig Melzer
Development Director Kimberly Olstad Piegaro
External Affairs Associate Sabrina Yvellez
Front of House Supervisor Jordan Peters
Production Manager Alberto Ruiz
Finance and Administrative Manager Caroline Grace Steudle
Administrative Coordinator Zakiya Rowe
Operations Director Ian Tabatchnick
Press Representative Blake Zidell & Associates

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