Heartbeat Opera’s 10th Annual Drag Show returns to Judson memorial church!

Cast and Creative Team coming soon…

Savor some delicious photos from previous Heartbeat Drag Shows…

Get a taste of the vibe:

ALL ARTS DOCUMENTARY: DRAGUS MAXIMUS

Catch a taste of this inimitable spectacle with this fabulous short documentary about our Drag Show from 2018, they heyday of Ethan Heard’s reign as director of our Annual Drag Extravaganzas.

MEET THE TEAM

ETHAN HEARD

Director/Co-Creator (Co-Founder of Heartbeat Opera)

Ethan Heard is a director, producer, and teacher who makes theater to build community and foster love. He co-founded Heartbeat Opera with Louisa Proske in 2014 and led the company for its first eight seasons, growing it into “an enterprise that, while small and still young, has already contributed more to opera’s vitality than most major American companies" (NYTimes). He is now the Associate Artistic Director of Signature Theatre in Arlington, VA, where he has directed Pacific Overtures, The Bridges of Madison County, and Which Way to the Stage. With Heartbeat, his radical adaptation of Beethoven’s Fidelio (NYTimes Critic’s Pick), reenvisioned through the lens of Black Lives Matter, featured more than 100 incarcerated singers from six prison choirs and was profiled on NPR. Confronting other urgent issues such as Asian erasure (Butterfly) and climate collapse (Hot Mama: Singing Gays Saving Gaia), his operatic work is “incisive and inspired” (Opera News) and has been presented at BAM, The Met Museum, The Kennedy Center, The Broad Stage, and on NYC’s High Line. Other Heartbeat productions include: Breathing Free, Lady M, La Susanna, Dido & Aeneas, Kafka-Fragments, and seven drag extravaganzas. Other opera includes Madame Butterfly (Opera Philadelphia), Truth & Reconciliation (Opera America), Desire|Divinity (Judson), Empty the House (Curtis), Sisyphus (Experiments in Opera), L’Orfeo (Yale), and Poppea (Princeton). He has also reimagined classic musicals and plays, casting Little Shop of Horrors’ Audrey II as a lip-syncing drag queen and Julius Caesar’s mob as social media users caught in a dangerous echo chamber. His interpretation of Sondheim (A Little Night Music, Into the Woods, Merrily We Roll Along, and Sunday in the Park with George) has been praised for its “emotional eloquence” (Boston Globe), and he has shepherded new works by Marisa Michelson, Mark Campbell, Rene Orth, Mel Marvin, Jonathan Levi, and Dan Schlosberg that explode traditional ideas of genre. Ethan is Co-Founder & Creative Director of Mind’s Eye Producing, and taught acting and directing at Yale for six years, where he earned his BA and MFA and began the beloved tradition of Yale School of Drag. ethanheard.com.

JACOB ASHWORTH

Co-Creator and Co-Music Director (Artistic Director, Heartbeat Opera)

See full bio on our staff page here.

Dan Schlosberg

Music Arranger & Co-Music Director (Music Director, Heartbeat Opera)

See full bio on our staff page here.

Curious about the location, want tips on what to wear, or just want the tea on the event? Check out our FAQs!

Made possible with support from Judson Memorial Church.