Too Much Coffee Man Opera

Too Much Coffee Man Opera

By Shannon Wheeler, Daniel Steven Crafts, and Damian Willcox

Too Much Coffee Man falls in love with his barista. When Espresso Guy enters, he too falls for the barista. Too Much Coffee Man defeats Espresso Guy and gains the confidence to ask the barista to be his sidekick. She rejects Too Much Coffee Man because she doesn't want to be anyone's sidekick. She wants to be her own superhero. Too Much Coffee Man and rest of the coffee patrons go back to loving coffee, a safer alternative to relationships.

The opera is an hour long. The three characters (plus coffee cup) sing in traditional opera form, accompanied by clarinet, piano and bass.

We'll perform at the Brunish Hall located in the heart of Portland Oregon in the Portland Cen­ter for the Performing Arts with a professional crew and top notch musicians.

This is the premiere of this Opera.

Given the popularity of coffee and the new surge of interest in Opera, a marriage of culture and pop-culture under the aegis of humor should prove especially interesting for a NW audience.

Too Much Coffee Man Opera

Too Much Coffee Man is a hopeless romantic searching for love.

Espresso Guy is cynical opportunist and Too Much Coffee Man's friend.

The Barista is an ambitious young woman with a crappy job looking for meaning in life.

 

Daniel Steven Crafts has completed seven operas and 13 large orches­tral works, as well as a variety of shorter pieces. The first of his collabora­tions with opera star Jerry Hadley, The Song & the Slogan, premiered in 2000.The work was made into a TV program for PBS, and won an Emmy in 2003 for Best Music. Besides two CDs on the BACAT label—Contemporaries, and Arias, his recordings include a Bassoon Concerto: Designing a Virtual Reality for a Landscape Which Never Was performed by the Kiev Philharmonic released by ERM Media on its Masterworks of the New Era CD series. His music has been praised for its strong melodies and sense of humor. Mr. Crafts hosted a radio program of classical vocal music on KPFA in Berkeley, California until moving to New Mexico in 1999.
   

Shannon Wheeler is the recipient of multiple awards including the Hatch Broadcasting Award (for a Converse Tennis shoe commercial) and an Eisner Award (for the Too Much Coffee Man comic book). He started cartooning in the late 80's while studying architecture at UC Berkeley. He's worked in both animation and illustration but never architecture. Too Much Coffee Man began in 1993 as a way to make fun of coffee patrons but morphed into a comic book character rich with social satire and political commentary. Dark Horse Comics has published 4 graphic novels collecting much of the work. Too Much Coffee Man currently appears in a comic strip published weekly by over a dozen alternative newspapers across the coun­try. Shannon Wheeler currently lives in Portland Oregon where he drinks too much coffee.
   

Damian Willcox is an award-nominated independent comic creator, free­lance illustrator; writer and poet Damian began creating sequential art in 1988. In 1997 he entered the self publishing world with his first comic featuring his decade spanning creation "dorkboy". Willcox's character "dorkboy” has garnered interest from publishers, animation studios, and movie produc­tion companies, and his work has been seen and heard in all forms of media ranging from newspapers and magazines to television and radio. Currently, Damian has created hundreds of online cartoons, and over 20 self published works. Damian Willcox currently lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his wife Miyuki.

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