Frustrated by the lack of institutional support for Downtown music, Rouse has made an ambitious bid for composer self-sufficiency. In 1995 he premiered a one-man "opera" "Failing Kansas", based on the same story as Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood", and in 2000 he produced an entire film with music by himself, rather pointedly titled "Funding". In an opposite direction, he premiered a technologically innovative opera called "Dennis Cleveland" at the Kitchen in 1996, based on a talk show format and with some of the singers/actors spread out among the audience, though with a dense libretto drawn from John Ralston Saul's critique of Western society in the latter's book "Voltaire's Bastards". In 2002 the opera was presented at Lincoln Center.