Private Project

I Hear America Singing

It's a musical and a documentary, an interview and an intervention, a dream and a wake. As a relentless film crew interrogates him, Broadway composer Robbie Doerfler prepares with his best friends Roger and Rose for “the backer's audition of his lifetime.”

  • Daron Hagen
    Director
    9/10: Love Before the Fall, Orson Rehearsed
  • Talal Jabari
    Director of Photography
    Staged, Full Signal, 9/10: Love Before the Fall, Naila and the Uprising
  • Tevi Eber
    Assistant Director
  • Daron Hagen
    Writer
    9/10: Love Before the Fall, Orson Rehearsed
  • Daron Hagen
    Composer
    Orson Rehearsed, Shining Brow, 9/10: Love Before the Fall, Amelia
  • Kip Soteres
    Producer
  • Robert Frankenberry
    Producer
  • Daron Hagen
    Producer
  • Robert Frankenberry
    Key Cast
    "Robbie Doerfler"
    Orson Rehearsed, 9/10: Love Before the Fall
  • Desiree Soteres
    Key Cast
    "Rose Marie Modjeska"
  • Christopher Scott
    Key Cast
    "Roger Tomchek"
  • Daron Hagen
    Editor
    9/10: Love Before the Fall. Orson Rehearsed
  • Nikola Chapelle
    Sound Recordist
    The King, The Edge of Democracy, The Great Hack, The Wild One
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental, Feature, Music Video, Other
  • Genres:
    Musical, Revue, Meta-modernist, Documentary, Meta-fiction, Bardo, Opera, Musical Theater
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 18 minutes 43 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    January 1, 2025
  • Country of Origin:
    United States, United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States, United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Daron Hagen

Daron Hagen occupies a unique position in American music and independent cinema as both an highly-successful concert music and opera composer and as the auteur director of internationally-laurelled feature-length “operafilms” that combine his own music and screenplays, placing him on the vanguard of a new genre described by OperaWire as “a neo-Gesamtkunstwerk form of opera cinema where each and everything seen on the screen, from the cuts to the lighting to the pacing, reflect the internal motivations of the story.” His films are streaming on Amazon Plus Video, Tubi, Cineverse, Future Today, Hoopla, and Reveel, among others, and have been supported by residencies at the Corporation of Yaddo and the Bogliasco Foundation, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Academy Award, among others.

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Director Statement

This film is the third in a trilogy of films collectively called "The Bardo Trilogy" which examine from different angles and with different methods how people understand and deal with the transition between life and what comes after. A stance of authorial reticence enables the meta narrative to unfold by combining documentary and musical theater tropes with a dash of magical realism so that the receiver can draw their own conclusions based on their own experiences.