Introduction
We Are All Constantly Transforming
What happens when the godfather of Minimal Music – Philip Glass – composes a chamber opera with an alien, that material is reinterpreted from a queer perspective, and brought to the stage with an all-female FLINTA+ cast? For director Paige Eakin Young, it was clear from the very beginning: no classic sci-fi story and not some metaphor for our society. Rather, an erotic space opera about love, care, vulnerability, visibility, and T4T – created by an exclusively FLINTA+ ensemble together with performer and musician Mara Snip as close accomplice.
T4ET
T4T (Trans for Trans) is an abbreviation that emerged in the 2000s in personal ads on Craigslist. Initially used to describe desire and romantic relationships between trans people, T4T is now used in a much broader sense to describe all the ways trans people love, support, connect with, and care for one another – in a world that is often hostile and violent toward trans people.
T4T also encapsulates what director Paige Eakin Young and performer and co-creator Mara Snip, both trans women, aim to achieve with their interpretation of Philip Glass and David Henry Hwang’s 1000 Airplanes on the Roof:
“I wanted to see myself on stage, to somehow see my own experiences reflected. To see a trans body I can identify with,” says Paige Eakin Young. “This piece is T4T because it’s a collaboration between Mara and me, but also because we shaped it (on a certain level) to reflect the love and care we ourselves have experienced from the queer and transgender community. It’s about connection, longing, and recognition – with plenty of desire and, very importantly: aliens. So ultimately, it’s T4ET!”
1000 Airplanes on the Roof premiered in 1988 and portrays a woman named M. who is abducted by aliens. M. recounts her encounters in the form of spoken text layered over Philip Glass’s repetitive, minimalist composition. Paige Eakin Young describes her approach: “When I began working on the piece, I had very different ideas about what I wanted to do with it. After casting Mara, I had to let go of those ideas and rethink everything together with her. Her practice as a performer became the starting point and anchor of my staging. The more Mara brought her own story into it, the more I was able to recognize myself in the piece.”
Connection and Mutual Understanding
Mara and Paige became friends during rehearsals. A collaboration developed that was new for both of them.
As Mara Snip describes: “Our connection and mutual understanding are the heart of the performance. My work always grows out of deep personal experience, and I’m used to sharing that with the audience. My strength is my vulnerability – which can also feel very lonely. In this piece, I don’t have to carry everything alone. Paige is there to catch and hold me. I deeply appreciate that Paige sees me and that we tell this powerful story together. We share the same vision, but we can also both be quite stubborn. I trust Paige; I can be honest. We can both say, ‘That doesn’t work. Wait, let me try this.’ There’s a constant exchange, which brings me great joy.”
This joy is shared by Paige Eakin Young: “We often joke that the piece is an intergalactic lesbian space opera. But there’s truth in that. There’s a lot of power in being desired. In being accepted. Through intimacy. Mara is incredibly hot on stage. She’s generous and truly shows herself in vulnerability.” The production is about witnessing and being seen – thematically, but even more so in how it challenges the audience’s perspective. How – and whom – do we desire? What do we perceive as foreign or other? And what does that reveal about our own perspective?
Mara concludes: “Only through the queer community and the lived experiences of trans people can I now see myself. It’s about unlearning the cis perspective. If you ask me, we are all constantly transforming — and isn’t that the beauty of life?”
Musical Arrangement
Our concept for 1000 AIRPLANES ON THE ROOF was fundamentally shaped by the decision to cast Mara Snip in the leading role. After director Paige Eakin Young saw one of Mara Snip’s solo performances in Rotterdam, she decided to place Mara at the center of the production: Mara’s personal story as a trans woman, as well as the beauty of her voice, which she layers using a loop station, thereby creating a kind of transcendent harmony (modern minimalism!).
The original score calls for a soprano who essentially functions as an instrument within the orchestra. In our version, the soprano – Sarah Bodle – becomes a fully developed character: an alien being who calls to Mara and helps her uncover the truth about herself. It was exciting for me to develop this character collaboratively in the rehearsal room – musically as well – exploring how she “speaks” or sings, especially since the score provides very few musical directions for the soprano part, let alone the libretto. We experimented with different vowels, vocal qualities, and dynamics to discover how the alien communicates with and connects to Mara in various moments.
Finally, we expanded the team to include a five-member FLINTA* orchestra featuring two synthesizers and a wide range of woodwind instruments. Minimal music begins with very small and seemingly simple musical components – a sequence of block chords, an arpeggio, a short melody – and gradually develops through repetition, layering, and looping into a complex structure that repeatedly disrupts our expectations, for example through irregular phrasing and shifting meters.
One of the greatest paradoxes in performing this minimalist score is that the musicians must remain highly concentrated and count meticulously in order to transport the audience into a kind of trance – to make them “take off.” We focus intensely so that the audience can fully surrender to the music and blissfully lose track of time and space. The result feels more like a rock concert than an opera, especially when we turn up the bass in the final sequence – the encounter with the aliens.
Turn off your phones for an hour and join us on an intergalactic journey!
Team
DIRECTION Paige Eakin Young CO-DIRECTION Mara Snip COMPOSITION Philip Glass TEXT David Henry Hwang MUSICAL DIRECTION Sarah Taylor Ellis CHOREOGRAPHY Julia B. Laperrière, Friederike Heine DRAMATURGY Anne van de Wetering SET DESIGN Ana Ines Jabares-Pita LIGHT DESIGN Catalina Fernandez ASSSISTANT DIRECTOR / PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT Anika Stauch / Morghan Welt
WITH Mara Snip and Sarah Bodle as well as musicians Sarah Taylor Ellis, Karola Elßner, Alba Gentili-Tedeschi, Holly Volker Schlott and Rachel Susser
TECHNICHAL PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT Helmut Topp SOUND Ronald Dávila Dávila LIGHT Ralf Arndt EVENT MANAGEMENT SOUND Sören Schwedler, Sebastian Vivas, Klim Losovsky, Ronald Dávila Dávila, Michael Tuttle, Stefan van Burg EVENT MANAGEMENT LIGHT Ralf Arndt, Moritz Meyer, Jens Tuch STAGE CONSTRUCTION Gregor von Glinski, Marc Schulze, Rui Wegener, Ralf Mauelshagen, Pet Bartl-Zuba, Anne Wundrak COSTUME Christina Kämper (Leitung), Kathy Tomkins ARRANGEMENT SURTITLES Renée Stulz OPERATOR SURTITLES Renée Stulz, Kathrin Grzeschniok, Anaise Kliemann, Lena Wetzel MAKE-UP DESIGN Anne-Claire Meyer STAGE MANAGEMENT Sophie Reavley, Regina Triebel SERVICE Management Vanda Hehr
BIOGRAphys
Paige Eakin Young | DIRECTION
Paige is a Canadian-born director and creative storyteller based in London. She specializes in interdisciplinary projects, particularly music- and sound-based storytelling.
As a director, her work combines a refined, minimalist visual aesthetic with rich sound design and layered musical dramaturgy. She works across opera, music theatre, staged concerts, live performance, and text-based theatre.
As a writer, she creates sound-theatre works and installations in collaboration with a core team of creative partners, combining music, dance, text, and visual imagery.
As a collaborator, Paige works as a dramaturg and artistic facilitator. She supports artists and companies in developing interdisciplinary projects, builds relationships between artistic partners, and helps shape creative processes with a focus on conceptual clarity and storytelling.
From 2007 to 2019, Paige served as Artistic Director of ERRATICA. She has collaborated with the Royal Opera House, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Coronet Theatre, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. Her productions and projects have been presented in New York, Toronto, London, Edinburgh, Rotterdam, and Leipzig.
SarAH Taylor Ellis | musiCal Direction / Arrangement
“Frozen meets Kurt Weill” (Nachtkritik). Whether collaborating on an original musical for an inclusive theatre in Berlin or composing an anthem for a women’s choir marching through New York, composer and conductor Sarah Taylor Ellis seeks to embrace the inherent hybridity and multiplicity of music theatre as an art form.
Sarah’s 2025–26 season includes the musical direction of Philip Glass’ 1000 AIRPLANES ON THE ROOF at the Neuköllner Oper, composing for Miranda July’s Auf allen Vieren at Sophiensaele, and the premiere of her indie-folk musical Die Mitte der Welt at the Landestheater Linz.
Sarah is a regular collaborator with the music theatre collective glanz&krawall. Following a critically acclaimed and sold-out world premiere in 2024, her bureaucracy musical Die Tüten aus der Verwaltung, created with Theater Thikwa, will be presented at the Politik im Freien Theater festival in 2025 and will return to Thikwa in November and March.
Sarah’s hybrid opera-musical Die Troerinnen received an OPERA America Discovery Grant, and she was awarded the Goldene Feder for her outstanding teaching and mentorship of students in music theatre studies at the University of Bayreuth. She holds a Ph.D. in Theater and Performance Studies from University of California Los Angeles and a B.A. in Theater Studies/Music and English from Duke University. She holds dual German and U.S. citizenship.
Anne van de wetering | dramaturgY
Anne van de Wetering (b. 1987) is a dramaturg, writer, and program curator. After studying Literature and Performance Studies at the University of Amsterdam and the Freie Universität Berlin, she worked for festivals such as Oerol Festival, O Festival Rotterdam, and Tilt Literary Festival.
As in-house dramaturg and librettist for the Rotterdam music and performance collective Club Gewalt and the Neuköllner Oper, she embodies her deep love for storytelling, a strong aversion to injustice, and a keen interest in collective and collaborative working methods.
She lives in Rotterdam with her cat and an extensive collection of science fiction and fantasy books.
ana Inés Jabares-Pita | Set Design
mara snip | m. / co-Direction
Sarah Bodle | sopranO
1000 AIRPLANES ON THE ROOF is presented by 
