JEFFREY A. LOCKWOOD

The locusts are coming!!! Well, at least Locust: The Opera (an environmental murder mystery with music by Anne Guzzo, libretto by Jeff Lockwood, and set/costumes by Ashley Carlisle) is coming to Laramie. And bringing an opera to the high plains of Wyoming raises some eyebrows and questions. Laramie—really? Well, yes. For centuries opera was the performance art of the people, rather than the wealthy elites. The nobility was often satirized, resulting in some wonderfully u

We (eight Americans and seven Moroccans, along with a French documentarian and a Japanese funder) pulled off a performance of Locust: The Opera in Agadir, Morocco, at the 13th International Congress of Orthopterology (the scientists who study crickets, katydids, grasshoppers and, of course, locusts). Everything went just as expected, meaning that almost nothing went as planned. My years of international ecological research paid off in terms of anticipating surprises and emb

The challenge of scientific literacy is communicating knowledge in forms that are evocative, memorable and intelligent. Stories engage people—and this approach drove a collaborative venture to convey an ecological epic. Locust: The Opera is an environmental murder mystery in which solving the century-old extinction of an iconic species provides lessons for the modern world. The ghost of the locust haunts a scientist until he can figure out how a creature that once blackene

I previously wrote about a collaborative project with Dr. Anne Guzzo—an acclaimed composer in the Department of Music—to produce a chamber opera (How Science OPERAtes). We are excited to announce that LOCUST: THE OPERA will premiere at the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyoming, on September 28th at 7:00 pm, with a matinee performance the next day at 1:00 pm. This is the story of the Rocky Mountain locust, whose swarms blackened the skies of North America until

Few people grasp the complexities of science and still fewer engage the richness of opera—so why not combine the two?! This seems absurd, but the venture is also ridiculously intriguing. I teamed up with Dr. Anne Guzzo—an acclaimed composer in the Department of Music—to propose writing and producing a chamber opera about the Rocky Mountain locust. If you think that’s remarkable, what’s really amazing is that we received funding. Our pitch was creative and maybe even plausi