We are finalist for NEFA’s 2024 National Theatre Project Creation and Touring Grant! I saw a crescent moon above a branch of silver… is a new multidisciplinary performance work adapted from queer pre-modern poetry and mythology. This multilingual performance will shine a light on the distant past to find new ways of conceiving gender and desire… […]
ΠΑΜΕ ΣΤΗΝ ΕΛΛΑΔΑ! In February Mat will travel to Greece as a 2024 Fulbright Scholar. During his fellowship Mat & Sebastian will research and collaborate with artists and musicians in Athens, Nafplio, Epirus and Crete, developing two new projects set to premiere in the US in late 2025 and 2026. Photos taken at the Benaki Museum […]
Four Larks traveled to Chicago in early January to present Hymns to the Society for Classical Studies at their annual conference. Mat & Sebastian joined a group of selected artists and scholars to share videos, and talk about their process of adapting Homeric poetry into contemporary theatre and folk music. For information about the upcoming live […]
Mat was invited to spend the spring as a fellow in the gorgeous estate at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY. He spent April-June hollering out folk songs and stringing together some new melodies in a converted dairy barn, biking around nearby trails, chasing ghosts in the mansion, reading, researching, and basking in the brilliance of […]
The Society for Classical Studies has selected our project hymns to support through their latest initiative Ancient Worlds, Modern Communities. The initiative was established to “bring the ancient Mediterranean and its reception into global dialogue with other cultures, past and present” This support from the Society for Classical Studies will help facilitate post-production work on the music […]
Mat has spent the last six weeks researching and devising a new project in residence at MacDowell. Read more about Mat‘s fellowship in AMERICAN THEATRE: “The MacDowell Fellowship program aims to nurture the arts by offering talented individuals an inspiring residential environment in which to produce enduring works of the creative imagination…“This incoming artist cohort brings […]
For the next two weeks, the Getty will will preview a work-in-progress draft of our hymns. These in-development videos are being presented as a part of the Getty’s Theater Lab. The completed album is now available for streaming and purchase via bandcamp. An album of new music and accompanying videos; seven chapters from Four Larks‘ live production Hymns, adapted for at-home audiences. […]
Our hymns are now available to stream and purchase via bandcamp The music was recorded in individual artists’ homes during the COVID19 lockdowns and the accompanying videos were created over five days in an empty Getty Villa. The Homeric Hymns, among the oldest extant poems from the ancient mediterranean, tell the stories of Demeter & Persephone, of Semele & […]
Mat and Sebastian were both selected to work as fellows in residence at the Bogliasco Foundation Study Center located on the Ligurian Coast in March and April 2022. Living alongside six distinguished international artists, Mat and Sebastian began researching and drafting a new live performance work, while completing video editing and audio mixing for their […]
The LA theatre community has honored our production of Frankenstein with 11 Ovation Awards (for the 2019/2020 theatre season in Los Angeles). We’re thrilled to have this recognition from our peers. 2021 Ovation Awards Presented to the Wallis for our original adaptation and production: Best Play Frankenstein / Best Direction Mat Diafos Sweeney / Best Choreography Sebastian Peters-Lazaro / Best Featured Actor Max […]
Our Frankenstein leads the count with a dozen nominations for LA Stage Alliance’s 31st Ovation Awards (for the 2019/2020 theatre season in Los Angeles). We’re grateful for the recognition from our peers. Nominations: Best Play Frankenstein / Best Direction Mat Diafos Sweeney / Best Choreography Sebastian Peters-Lazaro / Best Featured Actor Max Baumgarten / Best Featured Actress Joanna Lynn-Jacobs / Best […]
Happy 2021 dear friends! Here’s hoping that live art will resume and we can be together again soon. In the meantime, we’re digging our heels in to the digital reality. Watch this space for news about our first digital collaboration arriving later this year… We’re also excited to share this new video of Frankenstein. This […]
We mourn the Black lives lost to and endangered by systemic racism in America and we stand in outrage and condemnation of police brutality, in solidarity with protesters around the world. This movement is urgent but the work is ongoing. We acknowledge our personal responsibility and commit to actively work against anti-Black hate and violence […]
Mat talked to BROADWAY WORLD‘s Gil Kaan about Frankenstein and the Sherwood Award…READ Mat and Sebastian recently huddled with ALTA‘s Chris Martin to discuss immersive performance making and their collaboration with the Wallis…READ Most recently Mat spoke with LA STAGE ALLIANCE‘s Julia Stier to talk about the Sherwood, LA art making, and our hopes for the […]
The world premiere enraptured and enraged critics during its sold out extended run at the Wallis…Read what they had to say below… “INGENIOUS…a HYPNOTIC progression of sights, sounds, and ideas…a MASTER-CLASS of physical performance…a JAW-DROPPING combination of performance, stagecraft and technology that unites past and present in a spectral vision conveying the all-encompassing dread of a future mankind has […]
All upcoming 2020 events have been postponed- follow us on FB and IG to be notified first, or join our MAILING LIST. We are sending our deepest admirations to the frontline workers keeping the world moving and our thanks to all those who can choose to stay at home. See you on the other side […]
In an effort to support artists affected by the Covid-19 cancelations (hi!) the music hosting site bandcamp has cut their administrative fees, making it an excellent time to revisit one of our performance recordings including KATABASIS. Strap into your earphones and join us down below…LISTEN HERE
Our FRANKENSTEIN has been extended through Saturday March 7- last call to catch this “breathtaking and terrifying” (KCRW), “cerebral and viscerally spellbinding piece of entertainment” (ArtsBeatLA), a “jaw-dropping combination of performance, stagecraft and technology” (Los Angeles Blade) UPDATE: 3/2 All remaining performances of FRANKENSTEIN have sold out
Mat Diafos Sweeney has received the 2020 Dorothy and Richard E. Sherwood Award, a $10,000 prize awarded by Center Theatre Group to an innovative and adventurous Los Angeles theatre artist at a catalytic moment in their career. Since 1996, the Sherwood Award has been given annually in honor of longtime Center Theatre Group supporters Dorothy and […]
Our friends at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts have commissioned a brand new adaptation FRANKENSTEIN to premiere at the LOVELACE STUDIO THEATRE on February 19, 2020 (Performances run through March 1). This wild theatrical creature feasts on Mary Shelley’s classic novel and the 200 years of art, innovation, and monstrousness that have […]
National immersive theatre tastemakers NoProscenium have listed our Katabasis at the Getty Villa among the BEST SHOWS & EXPERIENCES of the year! “Four Larks’ journey through the underworld at the Getty Villa is the show I’ve been thinking about and coming back to all year…It wasn’t just my favorite piece of immersive theatre, it was […]
Our site specific series with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra continues to take new shape, this time inside the 1909 downtown temple that houses the PICO UNION PROJECT, in collaboration with new music heroes WildUp! under the curatorial baton of their venerable leader Christopher Rountree. “…this was a concert that mattered in ways a concert […]
Last week our latest collaboration with the LA Chamber Orchestra unfolded across the soundstage at Mack Sennet Studio, around a program curated by the brilliant Matthias Pintscher, featuring Michelle DeYoung. More images and info here. “Direction and design were entrusted to Mat Sweeney and Sebastian Peters-Lazaro, a.k.a. the roving theater outfit Four Larks…cunningly unified in […]
Our sold-out katabasis has completed its run at the Getty Villa, and the reviews are in! See photos, video, and hear music from katabasis here. ”Triumphant…A high-water mark for site specific theatre” Kevin Gossett, NO PROSCENIUM ”Like a profound church service in its reach for eternal stasis…so beautifully and skillfully ensnared by four larks” Steven […]
Our site-specific processional opera is back on at the Getty Villa from January 24-26 2019! Following a delay by the Woolsey Fire, which shuttered the Villa for two weeks in Novemeber, we’re excited to finally premiere this new work. The Getty will announce new ticket info in early January. Please join our mailing list or […]
This weekend we were set to present a site-specific processional opera at the Getty Villa, but nature had other plans. All of our thoughts are with those affected by the tragic fire. This weekend, before we disband a project that never was, we are congregating at our downtown studio to present a modified concert version, […]
On the heels of a spectacular opening to the series this spring, we will continue our site-specific new music explorations with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra this Fall. Join us at DTLA’s Hauser & Wirth for another musical and visual feast, this time curated by Derrick Spiva.
We’re preparing a mystery rite through the hallowed halls and gardens of the Getty Villa this November. Created as a companion piece to the Villa’s latest exhibition ‘Underworld : Imagining the Afterlife,’ our Katabasis will lead initiates through the realm of the dead in a performance that combines ritual theatre and immersive music.
Four Larks is featured in the current issue of Theater Magazine; a national journal of criticism, plays and reportage out of Yale. Read David Bruin’s brilliant review and analysis of Four Larks’ The Temptation of St Antony.
We’re joining forces with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra for a site-specific concert party on May 24th at Angel City Brewing Co. We’ll be art-directing and co-producing this event. LA music hero Andrew Norman (pictured above) has curated an incredible program of string works from the likes of Caroline Shaw, Sky Macklay & Nina C […]
Four Larks returns for one weekend only with a visually immersive concerto, scaling the submarine depths of an oversaturated imagination. Join us in our transformed DTLA hideaway for a night of sublime submersion- but don’t delay- these three showings are bound to fill up fast. Tickets and More Information Here! See you there friends!
Gustave Flaubert‘s The Temptation of St Antony is an interrogation of humanity’s religious impulse. The author was compelled and repulsed by the subject in equal measure. He loathed the irrationality and dangerous indoctrination he perceived in the church, but adored the ritual, tradition, curiosity and joyful communion that springs from the same well. We’ve spent the last few years wrestling with Flaubert’s gorgeous […]
Four Larks immersive opera returns for an exclusive season in late August! Our ovation award winning team reunites for the final draft of this acclaimed and transfixing theatrical tour de force. Limited tickets on sale in July. Join our mailing list and follow us on social media for first access.
Four Larks has received support from New Music USA for our latest project, Undine, set to premiere in 2017. Follow our project page for developing details of this exciting partnership.
