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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Our upcoming production It’s Gonna Rain reimagines the early experimental works of Steve Reich—including Come Out, Piano Phase, and It’s Gonna Rain—as a new form of instrumental music theatre. Rather than presenting these pieces in their original concert format, the production explores their theatrical potential through gesture, movement, voice, and spatial staging. Reich’s iconic techniques of looping and phasing become the dramaturgical engine of the performance: repetition becomes tension, drift becomes conflict, and structure itself becomes narrative.
Created during the political turbulence of the 1960s, Reich’s early tape and phasing works are deeply entangled with questions of race, protest, and media. This production revisits those histories through a contemporary lens, exploring how repetition can reveal systems of power, memory, and resistance. Musicians and performers share the stage as kinetic presences—speaking, moving, and embodying rhythm—while choreography and spatial sound transform Reich’s compositional processes into a live theatrical ritual.
It’s Gonna Rain asks what happens when we listen deeply to musical process: What stories emerge from repetition? What politics become audible? And how can minimalist structures become a stage for confronting the present?
