Composer Bryce Dessner and librettist Korde Arrington Tuttle discuss the range of artistic influences that informed Robert Mapplethorpe’s work — and how the production translates the visual medium into an interdisciplinary experience. Thirty years after the death of Mapplethorpe, we still cannot turn away from what his photos reveal; his pictures seduce, shock, offend, excite, intrigue, and scare us all at once. Triptych moves us away from confronting this work privately, slipping through coffee table books or seeing it in a museum gallery, and asks an audience to experience their reactions collectively.