Meth Borrison

Someplace Fun

Evening-Length Opera

A woman lives in a dying body and watches her loved ones grieve her to her face. Rebecca Clarke's third child is a black hole, and as it grows, it threatens to devour both her and her two adult children, Amy and Levi. Amy focuses on making tenure; Levi makes a film immortalizing his mother; everyone around Rebecca grieves her in real time, to her face. As Rebecca's illness consumes everything in its wake, the family is left to ask: what will be left, once the end finally comes?

Workshopped with The Cell (2026)

Brathwaite's Mecca

One-Act Opera

When photographer and culture-maker Kwame Brathwaite invites student and budding activist Clara Lewis for a portrait session in his Harlem studio, she learns what it means to be a Grandassa Model and to join a community of women whose Black beauty is as much a political act as their activism.

Workshopped with American Opera Projects (2025)

Sksksksksk

One-Act Opera

When a careless family sets off fireworks at a Fourth of July picnic during a Fire Watch, the once-idyllic hills erupt into a hellacious inferno. Two starving snakes, drawn to the campsite with the promise of fresh hotdogs, must work together to escape the fire, hotdog in-tow.

Commissioned & premiered by Strange Trace (2022)

Mel Rides the Bus Alone

One-Act Opera

When a young woman boards a cross-country bus bound for a hometown she has long-since outgrown, her anxiety spikes. Rather than think about how her hometown and her family might have changed, she distracts herself by imagining her fellow passengers as lively characters ... who keep talking about home.

Premiered with Pittsburgh Opera (2019)

Would You Eat Me?

One-Act Opera

K. is a young woman battling a bout of catatonic depression. Starving, bedraggled, and frustrated after rotting in her apartment for weeks, she looks to her late celebrity chef mother's cookbook for answers. She decides to make the simplest recipe in the book: basic bread. As she reads, her mother's picture-perfect image pops off the page and helps her cook. Quickly, however, her mother's perfectionism takes over, and she ruins the recipe again and again until it becomes so disgusting it ... comes alive? K. must decide: eat the disaster she made, or let it languish on the kitchen countertop.