the cell

Gelsey Bell (Playwright/Performer) (she/they) is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary performance creator, composer, playwright, and vocalist. Her recent works include the experimental opera mɔɹnɪŋ [morning//mourning] (2023), commissioned by the HERE Arts Center and presented in the Prototype Festival; Cairns (2020), a soundwalk for Green-Wood Cemetery; shuffleyamamba: Yamamba as a Bear (2021), a dance-theater piece created with Yasuko Yokoshi; and Mouthful (2024), an experimental opera by thingNY. Other recent compositions include “Archaeopteris,” commissioned by Wet Ink; “Oy Deus,” commissioned by Alkemie; and “From the Soil Back to the Soil,” commissioned by the Daxophone Consort. She has released multiple albums, including the recent mɔɹnɪŋ [morning//mourning], Skylighght, and Heads Together. She has received awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Opera America, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the Japan Foundation, NYSCA, and others. She was recently awarded the Edwin Booth Award by the CUNY Graduate students and an Herb Alpert/Ucross residency. Other performance highlights include Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812 (Broadway, Off-Broadway, etc.) and Ghost Quartet (Off-Broadway), Robert Ashley’s Foreign Experiences and Improvement, Darius Jones’s Samesoul Maker, Alaina Ferris’s The Lydian Gale Parr, Aaron Siegel’s Rainbird, and other works by Jay Afrisando, Kate Soper, Tomomi Adachi, Dan Trueman, and others. www.gelseybell.com

Anne DeMelo (Director) is a director and writer working across theatre, film, opera, and rock n’ roll. Raised in the rural Blue Ridge Mountains, she is now based in NYC. Anne develops and directs athletic, expressive, interdisciplinary and intertextual work that often draws on and re-frames old stories, archival materials, and historical texts. With cultural roots in Appalachian folklore and Latin American surrealism, and a CV that spans classic and contemporary theater, narrative film, concert touring, site-specific immersive installation, and experimental opera, her work is a genre-melting site for the exploration of new ways of seeing, thinking, and being together. Collaboration and community-making are at the core of her practice. Anne’s stage direction has been seen at  Ars Nova’s ANTFest, The Bushwick Starr, Exponential Festival at The Brick, JACK, LaMama Galleria, Pipeline, Prague Fringe, LPAC, and Columbia University, among others; her production of Ellen McLaughlin’s The Trojan Women was nominated for a Drama Desk Award. In 2023, she was the Creative Director for GRAMMY Award-winning duo Rodrigo y Gabriela’s national tour, In Between Thoughts. Her debut short film, I Have Love In Me, is currently on the festival circuit. As an associate/assistant director, Anne has collaborated on two world premieres subsequently recognized by the Pulitzer Prize, several international opera tours, and at cultural institutions including BAM Next Wave, LA Opera/REDCAT, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Detroit Opera, Atlantic Theater Company, VisionIntoArt/the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and the Prototype Festival. She is currently an Associate Editor at 53rd State Press, a New Georges Affiliated Artist, and an Associate Member of the SDC. MFA: John Wells Directing Fellow, Carnegie Mellon University.