A playwright and advocate breathes new life into a long-abandoned theater, creating a visual metaphor of recovery and rehabilitation for both the theater and those living in the shadows of the opiate crisis in the State Capitol of Augusta, Maine.

In a blues opera cast directly from the recovery, reentry, and unhoused community, playwright Michael Gorman and his “Phantoms” create an inspiring chorus of faces and voices that are often unseen and unheard to confront the bias and resistance that can lead to the destructive power of stigma.

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Haunted by the ghosts of Moby Dick and the memory of all those lost to the opiate epidemic, “A Phantom Song” takes us down to “the crossroads” where the past and future collide in a dramatic struggle for the soul of a theater and its surrounding community.