Squonk Opera's Inferno

Based on Dante’s Divine Comedy, Squonk Opera’s Inferno is set in the Appalachian coal town of Centralia, PA, where a mine fire simmers underground to this day. It is a town where trees, still standing, turn to ash. Pets disappear. A place that would melt your shoes where you stand.

Squonk Opera’s Inferno combines revolutionary projection puppets with the aural beauty and visual wit that has come to define a Squonk Opera show. The cast of seven musicians and actor/puppeteers propel the show into the shadowy world of memories that the industrial revolution left behind.

Created in 2001

“Old as Dante, New as MTV.”
American Theatre

“the funny, smart performance band of your brightly fevered dreams”

“…inventive, layered fun. It's a surreal dreamscape, alternately sweet, silly, satiric, portentous…and cool. An entertaining cross between a Kennywood outing, an eccentric opera and an interactive video installation, it's a 70-minute visual and musical geekathon that scurries back and forth between many levels.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“dazzling, often enigmatic and playful images and the weird but haunting music that has long been [Squonk’s] trademark”
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

To purchase a cd with the music from this production, please visit our store.

Photos by Archie Carpenter
and Seth Jackson