Stephen K.

Background

About Stephen K.

https://stephenkitsakos.com/Kitsakos is an opera librettist and author. His current project, with composer Martin Hennessy, is the opera adaptation of Tomasz Jedrowski's 2020 novel "Swimming in the Dark" in collaboration with the Jacobs School of Music at IU. With Hennessy he also wrote "A Pleasing Recollection:(2022) NY Premiere Feinstein's 54 Below,"An Incident in Sutton Square"(2020) nominated for Dominic Argento Chamber Opera Award & "The Woman in Penthouse A"(2020). With the composer Sheila Silver, he wrote libretti for "The Wooden Sword"(2009)"The White Rooster"(2010) & "A Thousand Splendid Suns"(2019) commissioned by Seattle Opera, adapted from novel by Khaled Hosseini, World Premiere, Feb. and a nominee for Best New Opera 2023 at the International Opera Awards. He is a recipient of commissions from the NEA, Seattle Opera, Jacobs School of Music, Florida Council on the Arts, NYSCA, the Catskill Watershed Commission, the Episcopal Diocese of NY, the Community Foundation of the Florida Keys, the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, NYFA, American Opera Project, the Rowe Foundation, the Community Foundation of the Florida Keys and the Majors Downs Foundation. He is currently the Executive Producer & host of the conversation series "Between Two Palms" whose guests have included among others Marisa Tomei, Judith Light, Tony Shalhoub, Paula Vogel, Donald Margulies, Michael R. Jackson, Michael Urie, Danny Rubin and journalists Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, Mike Rezendes, and Roxana Saberi. A graduate of New York University & and the BMI theatre writers program, between & 2013 he was a member of the Theatre Arts Faculty at SUNY New Paltz teaching courses in theatre studies, musical theater & performance as well as at Shantigar, the spiritual retreat of playwright Jean-Claude van Italie, and at Kripalu, and UCLA. During that time he was a contributing writer for "The Sondheim Review" and ABC-CLIO’s "Music in American Life". Professional affiliations include a librettist member of Opera America, the Dramatists Guild, and writer member of ASCAP. Currently he is co-editing, with Chery Lu-Lien Tan,"Key West Noir" an anthology of detective, crime fiction and psychological stories for Akashic Books as part of the award-winning "noir" series. https://stephenkitsakos.com