Over forty company members piled into MASS MoCA’s Hunter Center in December 2025 to workshop and perfect their presentation of Richard Foreman’s What to wear before its New York debut at PROTOTYPE 2026.

What to wear is a comedic, post-rock opera by composer Michael Gordon and the late downtown theater renegade icon Richard Foreman, who penned over 50 plays and nine operas across five decades. This presentation brings back to life Foreman’s original staging and production, with creative direction by Paul Lazar and Annie-B Parson. A collaboration between the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Beth Morrison Projects, PROTOTYPE, and Bang on a Can, this historic re-staging honors Foreman’s legacy and confirms Gordon as one of contemporary music’s singular voices, offering a commentary on the superficial pressures of society at a moment in which our contemporary culture renders these critiques more cutting than ever before.

Featuring colorful costumes, a kaleidoscopic set, and a giant duck, the work- in-progress performance of What to wear offered a glimpse into the creative process in-action in all of its absurd glory.