Rafael Gallegos is a theatre and opera director based in Bushwick, Brooklyn. He is the Artistic Leadership Fellow at New York Theatre Workshop, apprenticing under Artistic Director James Nicola. Rafael is Team Captain/Artistic Director of Conspiracy Laboratory, aka ConLab, an interdisciplinary arts team that creates new work. For ConLab he created the original works IT’S IN THE GAME, a series of sports plays, SONGS OUR MOTHERS TAUGHT US, SOLDIERZ TALE: AGENT ZERO and GOING, GOING, GONE! Opera and music theatre work includes Matt Marks’ THE LITTLE DEATH VOLUME 1 (Galapagos Artspace/New Amsterdam Records), THE COTERIE LAUNCH PARTY (Joe’s Pub), CENDRILLON (assistant to Chuck Hudson at Manhattan School of Music), Harry Partch’s DELUSION OF THE FURY (assistant to John Jesurun at The Japan Society), Alarm Will Sound’s 1969 (tour director). Rafael is an Artist-in Residence at The Bushwick Starr and a Resident Director for The Coterie. Rafael currently serves as Theatre Curator for The Tank and directs the FRESH OUT THE BOX series of new experimental theatre. Drama League Directing Fellow, Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, Lincoln Center Directors Lab, NYTW Directing Fellowship, Univeristy of New Mexico.
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The Little Death: Vol. 1, Matt Marks' post-Christian nihilist pop opera, is an ambitious new work that fuses bombastic electro-pop hooks, frenetically chopped break beats, hypnotic lyrics, and apocalyptic Christian imagery. Holding these disparate elements together is a unconventional narrative that follows two characters, Boy (Matt Marks) and Girl (Mellissa Hughes), on a journey through the world of Fundamentalist Evangelism, as they cope with repressed sexuality in a modern world.
The sample-heavy work draws on musical references that echo the character's sexual-religious confusion, including pop songs and gospel standards with evocative titles ("He Touched Me" and "When God Dips His Love In My Heart"). Marks took most of the sampled material from his own collection of 1970s gospel albums and classic hip-hop and soul recordings. Using a DIY approach, he produced the album using only a couple of microphones and a laptop running Ableton Live.
The stage show as directed by Rafael Gallegos takes inspiration from a number of sources, including The Brady Bunch Variety Hour and church lock-ins.
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