Opera House Arts' is a nonprofit organization founded in 1999 to restore the 1912 Stonington Opera House to its original purpose as a nearly 100-year-old community institution central to Stonington's Main Street. OHA's mission is to use the performing arts to foster and promote excellence in all the ways we perform our lives: Incite Art, Create Community. OHA produces a year-round schedule of events including live professional and community theater; 35mm, first run and independent films; concerts; community events and dances; and original filmmaking through our Imagination Project Public Access Digital Media Studio. We bring professional performing artists into our community, and the live of our community to professional artists. At the heart of OHA's mission is our commissioning and creation of new performance original to Down East Maine, a process which supports artists and strengthens our community by preserving our community's unique cultural legacies, and extending these into the national dialogue.
Original performances commissioned by OHA include:
a puppet performance by Mia Kanazawa (2003);
Thanksgiving, an original dance performance by Berg, Jones, and Sarvis based on poet Stuart Kestenbaum's poems (2004);
The Singing Bridge, A Downeast Chamber Opera by Anna Dembska and Beatrix Gates (2005);
Tire Tracks, a video documentary by John Steed (2006);
Perdita, a solo performance written and performed by Pierre Diennet (2006);
Quarryography, a site specific collaboration at Island Heritage Trust's Settlement Quarry by Alison Chase, Mia Kanazawa, and Nigel Chase (2007);
Island Prom, an award winning student video documentary by Leti Douglass and Galen Koch (2007);
Q2: Habitat, a new "story at the quarry" by Alison Chase, Mia Kanazawa, and Nigel Chase, in development in 2009 to premiere in 2010;
"Burt Dow, Deep Water Man," a children's opera version of the beloved story by Robert McCloskey, composed by Maia Aprahamian, in development in 2009 to premiere in 2010.
