The Art of Adaptations

Elk River Arts and Lectures (ERAL), Livingston Fringe Festival, and Opera Montana present a conversation between makers about The Art of Adaptations. Featuring Kelley Rourke and Isabel Shaida, this free conversation will explore questions including: Why do we adapt works? What does a good adaptation do? All are welcome on Tuesday, September 8 at 6 p.m. at Wheatgrass Books. This is a free event.

Kelley Rourke is a librettist, translator, and dramaturg. She has collaborated with composers including John Glover, Laura Karpman, Ben Moore, Kenji Oh, Zach Redler, Kamala Sankaram, Christopher Tin, and Wang Lu on new operas. Her modern English adaptations of numerous standard and not-so-standard operas have been hailed as “crackingly witty” (The Independent, London) and “remarkably well wedded to the music and versification in arias” (New York Times). She has written libretti for four youth operas, with performances across the country. She is the 2024 recipient of OPERA America’s Campbell Opera Librettist Prize, and she has received two commissioning grants from the New York State Council on the Arts.

Isabel Shaida is a theater maker in Bozeman, MT. She devises original, ensemble-driven projects and works as a movement director and teaching artist. She trains in The Suzuki Method of Actor Training and Mary Overlie’s Six Viewpoints and has studied developmental movement, somatic practice, Grotowski-style training, and Laban movement.

Isabel's most recent work, Kafka's Monkey - an adaptation of Franz Kafka's short story, 'a report to an academy,' premiered at Tinworks Art last fall and will be performed again in March. 

Isabel has also created works with Nervous Theatre (Dancing Animals, Chalk Circle, A Marvelous Party) and teaches movement in Bozeman where she has performed and created productions across the valley (incl… Late, A Cowboy Song, Stand Stark Still, My Barking Dog). She has performed with Monica Bill Barnes & Company (Days Go By, It’s 3:07 Again), Double Edge Theatre (The Odyssey) and Migration Theory (Open House). isabelshaida.com