Rubalee

About the show

Rubalee is an original heavy metal musical by Caborca about the critically endangered right whale. With a cast of 9 and a live drummer on stage, the score is sung chorally over live black metal percussion and an electronic soundscape. 

Rubalee is a young whale migrating across the burning equator with her mother. Oceanic warming, ship strikes, entanglement in fishing lines, and industrial noise pollution have made her home waters a kind of hell, leaving her pod divided on whether to stay or flee, resist or resign to their bleak fate. Above the ocean, They, Them, and Her debate conflicting strategies to save the whales, with violent and disastrous effects. The current population of North Atlantic right whales is roughly 340 individuals. Their impending extinction, devastating on its own terms, is also a stand-in for everything hanging in the balance of our choices, including human existence.

Rubalee is written and directed by Caborca’s artistic director Javier Antonio González. The music is a collaboration between choral composer David Skeist (also Caborca’s producing director) and heavy metal musician Michael Rekevics. Rubalee has undergone 3 developmental workshops including most recently at The Mercury Store, and on February 8 & 9, 2023, the first 50 minutes were performed for a live and online audience at the New Ohio Theatre in Manhattan.

Caborca is seeking developmental and presenting partners to help us finish this work of critical urgency and uncanny beauty.