The Longest Night

Created and performed by Bradley Greenwald and accompanied by pianist Sonja Thompson.

Open Eye welcomes Bradley Greenwald back to the stage for a reprise of The Longest Night. In an evening of his own making first presented in December 2013, Bradley Greenwald, along with pianist Sonja Thompson, create a meditative and joyful performance of music and poems embracing the longest and darkest night of the year.

Celebrating and embracing winter, the holidays and "hell-i-days," Seasonal Affective Disorder, friends, family, Christians, and Pagans, Greenwald succeeds in bringing light and levity as well as reflection and renewal to a season that too often is filled with stress and high expectation. Rodgers and Hart, Leonard Cohen, Purcell, J. S. Bach, Sting, Peter Mayer, Dar Williams, and more get their songs sung, with a little Margaret Atwood, Joseph Campbell, and Ogden Nash thrown in for good measure.

Celebrating the longest night of the year goes back to Stonehenge and Machu Picchu, Roman Saturnalia, and the Viking Yule. Its traditions defined when and how Christians celebrate Christmas. Bradley celebrates winter, the holiday blues, excess, and the soul's need for rebirth in an eclectic program of text and music as kaleidoscopic as the season.

Bradley Greenwald

Bradley Greenwald has performed on every major stage in the Twin Cities, most recently in The Baker's Wife with Artistry. A versatile performer both as singer and professional actor, his work has been seen in The Mystery of Irma Vep, In the Next Room, Hamlet, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and his Ivey Award-winning performance of I Am My Own Wife at the Jungle; Steerage Song, Oliver! and C. with Theater Latté Da; in the roles of Frog, Bert, the Grinch, Tin Man and more at The Children's Theatre Company; and a regular on the stage of the former Theatre de la Jeune Lune. Here at Open Eye, he has collaborated over the past three summers with Dan Chouinard, Prudence Johnson and Diana Grasselli on the hit cabarets Brecht and Weill: The Berlin Years, When We Have Only Love: Jacques Brel, and '66: Talkin' 'Bout My Generation. Additionally he has performed opera, theater, music-theater, concert and recital repertoire with several Twin Cities’ arts organizations, including the Guthrie Theater, Nautilus Music-Theater, Minnesota Dance Theatre, James Sewell Ballet, Vocal Essence, Minnesota Orchestra, Lyra Baroque Orchestra, A Prairie Home Companion, 10,000 Things, Skylark Opera and Ballet of the Dolls. He adapted the novel A Wrinkle in Time into a libretto for Libby Larsen's opera, and wrote the book and lyrics for C., an adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac, with Robert Elhai, music.