The next experiment in contemporary music theater is already bubbling in the test tubes of Opera Lab Berlin. We - an ensemble of singers, instrumentalists, composers, directors, lighting and sound designers, costume and set designers, dancers, choreographers, performance artists, actors - unite all the theatrical crafts to create unique pieces. Always on the lookout for new narratives, corresponding formats and exciting venues.
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What is shown exists. What is not shown disappears.
In 1965, amid the Civil Rights Movement, racial conflict and profound social transformation in America, Steve Reich recorded the voice of Black street preacher Brother Walter declaring: “It’s gonna rain.” A warning of catastrophe became a loop: repeated, fractured and transformed.
Sixty years later, Opera Lab Berlin reimagines Reich’s It’s Gonna Rain, Come Out and Piano Phase as a new work of music and dance theatre. Through choreography and Reich’s radical musical experimentation, the piece follows the mechanics of attention itself: how repetition creates meaning, how visibility creates power, and how the centre exists because we keep looking at it.
1965, the present and an uncertain future collide in a society caught in permanent spectacle - a world where reality, representation and surveillance increasingly merge. Images do not simply document reality; they construct it. Repetition produces truth. Attention becomes power. Visibility becomes currency.
Who occupies the centre? Who is heard? Who is seen? Who belongs? And who gets to construct the reality everyone else sees?
It’s Gonna Rain asks not what happens when history repeats itself, but what happens when it never stopped.
Performers: Astan Meyer, Francesca Verga, Omí, Evan Gardner
Music: Steve Reich & Opera Lab Berlin
Musical Direction: Youka Snell
Choreography: Ruben Nsue
Associate Director: Ben Goldby
Production Management: Christo Schleiff
Costume & Stage Design: Ela Bahena
Video: Samuel Chalela
Production Assistant: Giuseppe Trovato & Ye Juntao
