The Bradbury Tattoos is a singular multi-story operatic collaboration between the contemporary classical ensemble concert:nova, fusion composer Zac Greenberg, librettist and playwright Michael Burnham, and tattooist and surfboard shaper Steven Mast.

Made from tales in Ray Bradbury’s book The Illustrated Man, this evening-long enchantment will carry you, tattoo by tattoo, through four acts where you’ll visit a thoughtful cocktail hour in a quiet city apartment, a typical 1950s suburban neighborhood full of impressionable children who look under rose bushes, an isolated roadside farm in Mexico where you can stop for water if the car overheats, and a slowly exploding rocket deep in outer space. Along the way, you just might hear from some folks who, while on a walking tour of Wisconsin, meet an old man covered in pictures that won’t stop moving.

The Bradbury Tattoos was conceived by concert:nova’s Ted Nelson, who at his first meeting with Greenberg, Burnham and Mast said, “These stories started working on me when I was a kid and they’re still working on me after all these years. I think it’s high time we tell them again.”