Currently developing the music for this brand new musical!

THROUGH THE SUNKEN LANDS
A World Premiere Kennedy Center Commission
Based on the play by Tim J. Lord
Music by Avi Amon
Directed by Cara Phipps

Six months ago, a massive flood wiped away most of Arcady. Born with cerebral palsy, unable to contact her family, and trapped in the library, Artemis has built the place into her sanctuary. Trying to find a way back to Aunt Maggie's house, Artemis soon learns of a new danger—a committee determined to claim the town for themselves. Follow Artemis, Aunt Maggie, and a talking heron in the fight to save their dying town. First commissioned and released by the Kennedy Center as a radio play as part of WTYA Presents… in 2021, Tim J. Lord’s play transforms into a new musical, with music by Avi Amon and direction by Cara Phipps. This heartening world premiere amplifies the voice of a commonly overlooked community and teaches us how we can make the world a little better for everyone.

Click Here for tickets and info.

I’m creating the original score and sound design for this world-premiere during the inaugural season of The Perelman Performing Arts Center in Lower Manhattan.

Created by 600 Highwaymen for Talking Band
Written and Directed by: Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone
Featuring: Ellen Maddow and Paul Zimet

The Following Evening is an intimate portrait of two artists creating what may be their final performance together, set against the landscape of New York, a city of perpetual loss and renewal. A unique collaboration between two theater-making couples a generation apart – Ellen Maddow and Paul Zimet of Talking Band, and Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone of 600 Highwaymen – this affecting new work is a tribute to theater – an art form that vanishes – and the people who are devoted to it.

Click here for tickets and info.

A brand new batch of young people are starting at the Project, the way all of our members do, with Playmaking. They will write brand new plays and musicals that will then be performed by professionals. Join us for some of the best and imaginative theater in NYC!

These three shows will take place LIVE in our Theater and will also be streamed on YouTube.

Click here for more info and free tickets.

Writer and actor Lameece Issaq teams up with two-time Obie winning director Lee Sunday Evans on her riotously funny and gut-wrenching new play about a 40-whatever dental lab tech who gets fired and moves into St. Agnes Residence, a woman's rooming house run by nuns. While there, she must come to terms with her unfulfilled path to motherhood and the untimely death of her sister - all while fending off her unpredictable and sometimes deranged cohabitants. The play is performed by Issaq in a story-telling tour-de-force.

Scenic Designer: Peiyi Wong
Costume Designer: Jian Jung
Lighting Designer: Mextly Couzin
Composer & Sound Designer: Avi Amon

Executive Producers: victor cervantes jr., Arian Moayed, Rachel Sussman

Click here for tickets and info.

Original Music and Sound Design for Sylvia Khoury’s Pulitzer Prize-finalist play.

SELLING KABUL
Written By Sylvia Khoury
Directed by Evren Odcikin
Scenic Design: Sasha Schwartz
Lighting Design: Maria Shaplin
Costume Design: Dina El-Aziz

Kabul, Afghanistan. 2021. Taroon, a former U.S. military interpreter, is hiding from the Taliban in his sister’s apartment in the wake of the American troop withdrawal. On the eve of his son’s birth, Taroon is faced with an impossible decision — stay with his family or escape to safety. Sylvia Khoury’s gripping thriller is a searing look at the human cost of America’s longest war, and the love and family that keeps people going in the face of the harshest conditions.

Click here for tickets and info.

A very cool out-of-town moment for this piece. I’m creating the score and and sound design. Come through if you find yourself in The Netherlands later this summer!

Created by 600 Highwaymen for Talking Band
Written and Directed by: Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone
Featuring: Ellen Maddow and Paul Zimet

In their brand new piece The Following Evening, they celebrate the transience of theatre and the steadfastness of love. After all, life and art are fleeting, but does that also apply to loving each other? You see an elderly couple working on perhaps their last theatre performance in New York. At a careful pace, a beautifully stylized piece about the rhythm of life and the passage of time appears. Sit down for a poignant and beautiful ode to a vanishing art form, and the people who devoted their lives to it.

Click here for tickets and info.

ON THE MOVE: The Transportation Plays

Have you heard about this year’s One-on-Ones? They are going places! The format, as always, will feature short, wacky musicals written by adults, and performed by adults with their kid partners. The twist this year is that each pair has randomly drawn a mode of transportation at random. Where will they go next? These shows are, as always, free.

The Performances:
Friday, July 21 @ 7:30pm
Saturday, July 22 @ 3pm
Sunday, July 23 @ 3pm

Click here for tickets and info.

I am composing the score and sound for SWEET CHARIOT at the 18th annual UNDER THE RADAR FESTIVAL!

Created by Eric Lockley
Directed by Shariffa Ali 
Presented in collaboration with The Movement Theatre Company

When the prospect of a far-off place called Home seems more appealing than the terrors of Earth, Marcus, a down and out teacher, launches himself on a journey across planets and centuries. Marcus risks everything, and a dysfunctional space crew will stop at nothing to discover Home. But as they encounter mysterious alien figures, Afro-Bots, and a very uncertain future, Home may not be all that they expected. SWEET CHARIOT is an Afro-futuristic exploration of the sorted line between escape and resilience, posing the question: is true liberation only possible for Black people beyond Earth?

Click here for tickets and info.

A brand new batch of young people are starting at the Project, the way all of our members do, with Playmaking. They will be taking the course and writing new plays and musicals that will then be performed by professionals. These three shows will take place LIVE in our Theater.

PLEASE NOTE: We do not yet know what the COVID-19 restrictions will require in terms of Social Distancing. The production will be live streamed on our YouTube channel. Please make your reservations for the live stream, if in-person tickets become available, we will offer them in the order in which the reservations for the live stream were received.

Click here for more info and free tickets.

In Melis Aker’s world premiere play HOUND DOG, a young musician returns from abroad to her hometown of Ankara, Turkey to look after her widowed father. Forced to reckon with the family and community she left behind, an investigation into her grieving parent’s strange pilgrimage to Graceland unravels into a sonic mirage of memory packed with humor, nostalgia and the love we cultivate across generations. Directed by Machel Ross with music by Aker and the Lazours, this cross-cultural jam-session-meets-play explores the winding path towards forgiveness and belonging. 

A co-production with PlayCo

AVI AMON (Music Direction & Sound Design, Music Production, and Co-Orchestration)
FRANK J. OLIVA (Set Design)
QWEEN JEAN (Costume Design)
TUÇE YASAK (Lighting Design)

Click here for tickets and info.

Based on the Hannah Arendt’s controversial idea “The Banality of Evil” and her scandalous  New Yorker article about the trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann in 1963. Meta-Phys Ed.’s THE BANALITY OF EVIL is a neo-noir courtroom drama about a “show-trial on trial”, and the mystery about how everyday people become war criminals. 

Hannah Arendt was an influential German Jewish political philosopher, theorist of totalitarianism and anti-semitism, and refugee surviver of the Third Reich.  In her infamous article on the Eichmann trial, Arendt reports in person from the Jerusalem courtroom and concludes that the accused architect of “Final Solution” is not a fanatical monster, but a thoughtless clown.

THE BANALITY OF EVIL tries to solve the mysteries of how did Eichmann accidentally becomes a Nazi and commits crimes against humanity?  What caused the collapse of the show trial of the century collapses? How did a magazine article becomes the center of global controversy?

CREDITS:
Performed by: Rawya El Chab,Torres, Dara Callie Silverman
Director: Jesse Freedman
Costume Designer: Karen Boyer
Sound Designer & Composer: Avi Amon
Scenic Designer: Kyu Shin
Lighting Designer: Yi-Chung Chen
Stage and Production Manager: Jennifer Deane
Intern/ Assistant Director: Luke Hicks

Click here for tickets and info.

Remember When They Told You This Was A Helicopter, by Emma Wiseman & directed by Rowan Magee, is the story of a puppet trapped in a manipulative skyscraper with video game-like rules. This work-in-progress is the recipient of a Jim Henson Foundation Workshop Grant and an ACWC Mini Grant, and uses bunraku-style puppetry and projection.

Click here for tickets and info.

Music and Sound for a new puppet-based collaboration with Andy Gaukel.

In Animist, a solo performer engages with a life-sized puppet to explore the stress of depression, addiction and the profound feelings of loss many of have experienced not only during the COVID-19 pandemic, but also during life itself.

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By Ebru Nihan Celkan
Directed by Keenan Tyler Oliphant
Original Music and Sound Design for the U.S. Premiere

“I open the door. The tear gas has dispersed, the street is quiet. Someone’s sitting on the curb opposite. My stinging eyes are half open. I can’t see properly. I walk toward her. I reach out my hand. Where are you?”

Umut and Janina meet and fall in love in Istanbul, where rebellion simmers amongst the queer and displaced youth. Using video recordings and phone calls to fight against physical and emotional distance, Umut is caught between the momentum of sociopolitical change at home and the promise of a quieter life in Berlin with Janina. By turns explosive and intimate, WILL YOU COME WITH ME? explores the chaos and complexities of living through an uprising with generosity, love, and tenderness, as only live theatre can do.

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By Mona Mansour
Directed by Evren Odcikin
Original Music and Sound Design for this West Coast Premiere

Mia, an American conflict photographer, wakes up at the site of a massacre in Syria, not sure how she got there. With her Turkish girlfriend Derya and her Californian mother Jane, Mia must slowly piece together the details of her past to find out what happened. Mona Mansour’s beautifully human and surprisingly humorous play asks what it would mean for our souls—personally and as a nation—if we were to truly see the impact of our actions.

Click here for tickets and info.

A brand new batch of young people are starting at the Project, the way all of our members do, with Playmaking. They will be taking the course and writing new plays and musicals that will then be performed by professionals. These three shows will take place LIVE in our Theater.

PLEASE NOTE: We do not yet know what the COVID-19 restrictions will require in terms of Social Distancing. The production will be live streamed on our YouTube channel. Please make your reservations for the live stream, if in-person tickets become available, we will offer them in the order in which the reservations for the live stream were received.

Click here for more info and free tickets.

New score for this short by Zoey Martinson.

In this playful comedy, three kids worry that their beloved school bus driver will be lonely this summer without them. They set out to find her a partner and imagine the perfect matches. Part of the 8:46 Films Initiative: A collective of Black creative executives, collaborated with Tribeca Studios and Procter & Gamble to produce four short films influenced by the length of time it took for George Floyd’s life to change the world, reclaiming the story to build a legacy of hope.

Click here for tickets and info (in-person and streaming options available)

Original music for this hybrid In-person and virtual event

The sun is going down. Shabbat is almost over. You - the matriarch of a family who has left the Forest, crossed the Desert, and made a life in this New Place - you are now in your twilight hours. No longer able to see or speak, your three daughters have returned home to keep vigil by your side. As they dredge up History, warping time, space, and language around you, your only hope for peace may be your granddaughter, the one person who seems to notice you’re still there. An experiment in radical empathy, and come apart compresses a thousand years of Jewish diaspora history into a single generation to examine the violence assimilation yields, the false promise of America, and the rituals through which we might begin to heal.

Click here for tickets and info.

New score for this short by Zoey Martinson.

In this playful comedy, three kids worry that their beloved school bus driver will be lonely this summer without them. They set out to find her a partner and imagine the perfect matches. Part of the 8:46 Films Initiative: A collective of Black creative executives, collaborated with Tribeca Studios and Procter & Gamble to produce four short films influenced by the length of time it took for George Floyd’s life to change the world, reclaiming the story to build a legacy of hope.

Click here for tickets and info (in-person and streaming options available)

Short, fun, collaboration with my playwright pal, Emily Zemba!

MTA Radio Plays is a series of audio dramas created to honor and celebrate the people that keep New York City running. Composed by 14 playwrights, each episode is inspired by a stop along the MTA’s 2 Line, starting at Wakefield-241st Street in the Bronx, weaving through Manhattan, and ending at Flatbush Ave in Brooklyn. Each writer has selected a stop along the line and written a piece that reflects their own experience, in whatever style they choose. MTA Radio Plays is curated by playwright Ren Dara Santiago (The Siblings Play, Rattlestick Spring 2020). These short radio plays will be released monthly in groups of 3-4 episodes and will be available on Rattlestick's website. Tickets to the complete series are $15.

Click here for streaming in info.

Original music and sound design for this LIVE production, directed by Shariffa Ali.

Mlima, a majestic and powerful African elephant, is murdered for his tusks. From beyond the veil of death, Mlima’s spirit follows the path of his tusks on a moving, lyrical journey through the dark world of the international ivory trade. From Lynn Nottage, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of SWEAT and RUINED, Mlima’s Tale is a captivating and haunting fable come to life.

Click here for tickets and info.

Music and Lyrics by Avi Amon & Nolan Doran
Book by Ty Defoe

The Lesson is a fantastical reimagining of a chance encounter between a revolutionary Beethoven and a more-established Mozart who meet in Vienna in 1787. The show is set in an alternate universe that melds the future and past into an entirely new and entirely queer, fun, and... political space. It’s a lesson that will change their lives - and the world - forever.

Director/Editor: Zoey Martinson
Director of Photography: Justin King
Choreography: Francesca Harper
Orchestration by: Bruce Coughlin
Mixed and Mastered by: Avi Amon & Nolan Doran
Stage Manager: Kate Shelton

Producer: Allison Gold
Production Manager: Justin Myhre
Asst. Producer + Design: Hannah Kloepfer
Casting Director: Victor Vazquez, X Casting
Casting Assistant: Charlie Hano

SEPTEMBER 6TH, 10TH-12TH AT 8PM Eastern

based on an essay by Walter Benjamin 
Directed By Jesse Freedman
Presented by The Brick Theater
Live Streamed thru Twitch: Twitch.tv/outofcaution

A multi-media cabaret about art, technology and the fight against fascism. The iconic German-Jewish critic, Walter Benjamin, wrote this influential essay in 1935 while running from Nazis.

FEATURING
Kaaron Briscoe & Eli M. Schoenfeld

Dramaturgy by Abbey Teller
Costume Design by Karen Boyer
Composition and Sound by Avi Amon
Sound by Keenan Hurley
Media Design by Lacey Erb
Scenic Design by Kyu Shin
Assistant Director and Intern – Nam Pham

Click here for registration and info.

Original music and sound design for this world premiere play by Karen Zacariás, which was unfortunately cancelled due to the COVID pandemic. Please check out the score below!

Based on the true history of “orphan trains” that transported immigrant children (mostly Irish) to homes in the West, this world-premiere play explores the events that led to the sensational (and now-forgotten) "Trial of the Century" custody case that stirred the nation into a frenzied debate about children, law, race, class and religion. Directed by Shariffa Ali, The Copper Children takes a sharp look at the collision of good intentions and despicable behavior, blending humor, tragedy, joy and unsentimental social commentary.

Click here for streaming tickets and info.