The 2002 performances of Failing Kansas at the New Zealand Festival created a scandal and ultimately a sensation. Credited with knocking Osama bin Laden off of the front page of the National newspaper and dominating TV and radio for days, the piece was ultimately a sold out triumph heralded as “A New Art Form." Now, almost twenty years later, Rouse has assembled the original footage and live recordings into a complete concert film.
2014 performance of "The Demo," a music theater work written by composer/performers Mikel Rouse and Ben Neill based on Douglas Engelbart’s historic 1968 demonstration of early computer technology. Engelbart’s 1968 demo rolled out virtually everything that would define modern computing; videoconferencing, hyperlinks, networked collaboration, digital text editing, and something called a “mouse.” The Demo re-imagines Engelbart’s historic demonstration as a technologically-infused music theater piece, a new form of hybrid performance.
World premiere of "The Demo," a music theater work written by composer/performers Mikel Rouse and Ben Neill based on Douglas Engelbart’s historic 1968 demonstration of early computer technology. Engelbart’s 1968 demo rolled out virtually everything that would define modern computing; videoconferencing, hyperlinks, networked collaboration, digital text editing, and something called a “mouse.” The Demo re-imagines Engelbart’s historic demonstration as a technologically-infused music theater piece, a new form of hybrid performance.
Retrospective concert with special guest Jeff McErlain at National Sawdust on April 29, 2017.
The Canadian premiere of Mikel Rouse's multimedia opera Dennis Cleveland at the 2008 Luminato Festival.
A short film music album hybrid for the Metronome project by Mikel Rouse.
Mikel Rouse is an American composer, filmmaker and artist associated with the Downtown NYC movement Totalism. He is perhaps best known for his "talk show opera" Dennis Cleveland.