MELISSA WEAVER
Production Designer & Stage Manager

Melissa has worked with Paul Dresher since 1981, creating new music theater pieces including The Way of How, are/are, SeeHear, Slow Fire, Power Failure, Pioneer, Awed Behavior, Ravenshead and the design for the Paul Dresher Ensemble Electro-Acoustic Band touring the United States, Europe and Japan.

Recent directing credits include “The History Lesson,” an opera by Howard Hersh, presented by the Festival of New American Music; and the experimental opera entitled “Kali,” with Indonesian poet/activist Gonewan Mohammad, composers Jarrad Powell and Tony Prabowo, the New Jakarta Ensemble and tenor John Duykers. Produced by Gamelan Pacifica, “Kali” premiered at On The Boards in June, 2000. She recently directed John Duykers in Peter Maxwell Davies' "Eight Songs for a Mad King" at the Monday Evening Concert Series at Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. She also directed the premiere of her second collaboration with Amanda Moody,"Serial Murderess", part of Footloose's Women on the Way Series at San Francisco's Venue 9 and, for Berkeley Opera, Vivian Fine's "The Women in the Garden" and John Thow's "Serpentina."

Weaver is currently collaborating in the development of two upcoming music theatre works: the new opera, “Caliban Dreams,” with composer Clark Suprynowicz, commissioned by the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival under artistic director Charles McCue; and the original oratorio, “Bitter Harvest (a love story),” with composer Kurt Rohde and sound designer Mark Grey, for The Berkeley Symphony Orchestra under the musical direction of Kent Nagano.

Weaver is artistic director of Agapé Performance Group and created original works including "The Winchester Rosary" with Amanda Moody, "A.ga.pe," "Last Stand" and "Trespass Knot," featuring music by Miguel Frasconi and choreography by Jess Curtis. Weaver also directed Rinde Eckert's "The Gardening of Thomas D." and "Dry Land Divine," presented across the U.S. and Europe, and Hans Werner Henze's "El Cimarron" featuring John Duykers, which was given the L.A. Times Beckmesser Award for Outstanding Contemporary Performance of 1983.

She was a C.A.C. Artist-in-the-Schools at Marin County's Sir Francis Drake High School's Communication Academy in 1996-98 creating original music theater works with students and is helping to develop a New Music Theater/Opera program at California Institute of the Arts in Valencia.