Independent Arts News Reporting La MaMa Premieres The Moby Dick Blues, A Working Class Opera with a powerful lens on addiction
Reported Monday, June 9, 2025. Updated on June 11, 2025.
Pictured Above: Moby Dick Blues-Teddy Lytle. Photo Credit: Bill Axell.
NEWSROOM POST: NEW YORK, NEW YORK
A bold new rock opera confronting addiction and identity takes the stage at La MaMa
New York, NY – La MaMa proudly presents the world premiere of The Moby Dick Blues, a powerful new blues/rock opera exploring addiction, survival, and redemption in modern America. Created by playwright and advocate Michael Gorman and directed by Joe John Battista, with original music by Battista and lyrics by Gorman, this groundbreaking musical runs June 7–22, 2025, at the Ellen Stewart Theatre, La MaMa’s flagship venue in New York City.
Part musical theater, part social commentary, The Moby Dick Blues reimagines Herman Melville’s legendary tale through the lens of the opioid epidemic that has devastated working-class communities across the country. A fusion of blues, rock, rap, and spoken word, the opera tells the story of a young sea captain who makes a dark pact with a fisherman-turned-drug-dealer, plunging into a harrowing journey that blurs reality, myth, and consequence.
“Think Trainspotting meets The Perfect Storm” in The Moby Dick Blues—a working class opera for our planet…for our times” says Gorman. Told through lyrics and live music that span the spectrum from blues, spoken word, rap and rock, this epic opera begs the question, “What was Ahab but an addict really, and what was the white whale but an allusion to opium, and heroin, its contemporary scourge.” The opera’s metaphor calls for a reevaluation of Ahab’s vengeful obsession with the White Whale, and our own destructive relationship with nature, the environment and ourselves.
Pictured Above: Moby Dick Blues. Photo Credit: Bill Axell.
The opera draws deeply from Gorman’s personal loss—his brother, a commercial fisherman, died of a heroin overdose—channeling that grief into a theatrical experience that is both visceral and transformative. Through The Forty Hour Club, Gorman and his creative team have crafted a genre-defying work that seeks to replace myth with truth, and despair with purpose.
The production features a cast of over a dozen performers and a live five-piece band, with design contributions from award-winning artists including Christopher Akerlind (Lighting), Donald Eastman (Set Design), and Angela Wendt, original costume designer of RENT.
Performance Schedule:
Thursdays–Saturdays at 7 PM, Sundays at 2 PM. Special Opening Night: Monday, June 9 at 7 PM.
Tickets:
$30 General | $25 Students/Seniors | $10 Early-Bird (first 10 tickets per show online)
Tickets & Info: LaMaMa.org/the-moby-dick-blues
Pictured Above: Moby Dick Blues. Photo Credit: Bill Axell.
The Moby Dick Blues is part of Gorman’s larger project, Chasing the New White Whale—Harpooning Addiction, an arts advocacy initiative aimed at amplifying the voices of recovery and reentry communities through theater, music, and documentary film. It marks a seven-year creative journey grounded in Gorman’s native New England and shaped by his mission to drive cultural change.
This compelling production continues La MaMa’s long tradition of championing bold, experimental theater that engages with urgent social issues. From Angels in America to The Moby Dick Blues, the stage remains a vessel for truth, transformation, and healing.
Michael Gorman (Playwright / Producer / Experimental Theater Artist / Advocate) and his production company—The Forty Hour Club—are long-time residents of La MaMa Experimental Theater Club in New York City, where Mike has a long-standing history and has produced many of his plays over the past 25 years. As an artist, advocate, and tradesman, Gorman embraces the collaborative spirit of the job-site to tackle major issues and bring an authentic working-world perspective to the stage. His work focuses on the social, environmental, economic, and systemic challenges facing working communities, and the paramount issue of sustainability. Through his art & advocacy theatrical model—Chasing The New White Whale— Harpooning Addiction, and through his work with the addiction/recovery and reentry communities, Gorman has been able to directly address the opioid crisis taking place in fishing and working communities in his home State of Maine, and beyond. His latest epic work—The Moby Dick Blues—is the product of a seven-year developmental journey deep into the heart of the opiate epidemic in New England.
