mano a mano: an operatic monodrama

Plucked from the tradition of the medieval storytelling bard, MANO A MANO is an operatic monodrama about toxic masculinity, needling Anglo-Saxon epics with personal anecdote, pseudo-history, Antonio Banderas movies, tangents about the Romans, boxing, and stories about New Jersey.

Writer/performer Paul Pinto embodies all the characters across a five-octave range of timbres: sweet, throaty and viscerally guttural. Posing the question "what if Sir Gawain and Beowulf were fighting over killing the same dragon?" he answers with ninety minutes of virtuosic chants, rants, song and spectacle, as he bobs and weaves between passages of puckishly quick verbiage and aching melancholia. Director Kristin Marting stages it in the round with the audience immersed in the action, surrounded by a mix of wild saxophone and percussion improvisation.

Award-winning designers Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew and Philip White, and virtuoso thingNY bandleader Erin Rogers reunite for the first time since Pinto's 2017 operatic debut Thomas Paine in Violence.

THU FEB 12 @ 7pm
FRI FEB 13 @ 7pm
SAT FEB 14 @ 7pm
SUN FEB 15 @ 2pm
MON FEB 16 @ 7pm
THU FEB 19 @ 7pm
FRI FEB 20 @ 7pm
SAT FEB 21 @ 7pm
SUN FEB 22 @ 2pm

TICKETS
$10-75

SHOW PAGE

La MaMa
Ellen Stewart Theater
66 E 4th Street
New York NY

MANO A MANO: an operatic monodrama 
[world premiere]
by Paul Pinto

Performed by
Paul Pinto
Erin Rogers
Dennis Sullivan
Zach Herchen

Developed with and Directed by Kristin Marting

Lighting and Projection design by
Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew

Sound Design and Mixing by
Philip White