The Water Isn’t Fine

“You are all good people, aren’t you?” asks Citizen Scientist #1 of her audience in Newtown Odyssey. The new opera, a collaboration between artist Marie Lorenz, composer Kurt Rohde, and writer Dana Spiotta, is designed to take place on the shores of Newtown Creek, the heavily polluted estuary separating Brooklyn from Queens. Last Friday’s dress rehearsal, however, was held at Amant, an arts organization located in an industrial stretch of East Williamsburg. Stylish European jetsetters in town for Armory rubbed shoulders with local artists, including Priscilla Stadler, whose zine, Tales from the Creek: The Adventures of Mollusca (Call Me “Mo”) Mussel, narrates Newtown’s remediation by way of a sentient, chatty bivalve. Earlier in the afternoon, members of the Newtown Creek Alliance (NCA) facilitated a “learnshop” about the history of the area (in the early twentieth century, the creek saw more cargo traffic than the entire Mississippi River) and the programs they’ve developed in support of its revitalization: rain gardens, native plant cultivation, educational tours, …