Blood on the Dining Room Floor

Jonathan Sheffer’s 'Blood on the Dining Room Floor' arrived Off-Broadway at the Peter Norton Symphony Space in 2003 as a striking, avant-garde chamber opera adaptation of the legendary, puzzle-like 1933 modernist mystery novel by Gertrude Stein. Conceived as a highly stylized, non-linear investigation into linguistic perception, crime, and domestic dread, the experimental plot follows an eccentric American family residing in a rural French villa who find themselves unravelling following the suspicious, unexplained murder of their housekeeper, using Stein’s repetitive, rhythmic text as a libretto. Directed with sharp atmospheric tension by Jeremy Dobrish, the performance captures an absolute pinnacle of modern experimental opera curation.