MUR is a New York artist, composer, and director with a lucid long-term vision and the discipline to match — someone who can name the costume designers and choreographers of every generation, lived illegally in their Lower East Side studio for five years to fund their practice, and is already talking about their MoMA retrospective without a hint of irony.

For over four years, I have collaborated with MUR on five original operettas — Children of the Earth, Wonders of the Water, Angels of the Air, Salamanders of the Fire, and G — a series examining how we live in the modern world and how we might do better. I served as costume designer, dramaturg, set collaborator, and producer across all four. I raised over $90,000 to bring them to life. Every production sold out.

The work demanded everything: imagination, resourcefulness, and the ability to build something that felt inevitable on a budget that required you to be very smart about every dollar.

(all photos by Victor Jeffreys II)