New narratives and speculative imaginaries

Day 1

Taking this as a starting point, the workshop invites participants to shift their centre and to explore new narratives in opera from a radically nomadic, decolonial perspective. Engaging the both ancient traditions and the radical aesthetics of a new generation of practitioners, informed by a wide-ranging set of musical, political and praxial experiences, it presents a secret, untold, and counter history of opera that opens the pathways to new imagery horizons and futures. 

Session 1: Introduction: participants introduce themselves, discuss their stakes in the workshops and their aspirations and dreams

Session 2:  Introduction and multimedia presentation interweaving ideas and speculations with text, videos and images

Day 2

Working from the crossroads of the sacred and the profane, passion and comprehension, orality and the written word, of inner roots and external adjuncts, fatal vocal force and generosity, we explore and experiment with new narratives that reimagine opera / theatre as ritual and communal practice, opera as spectacle, opera as choral life, opera as musical theatre, opera as big band, opera as sound (and unsound) material, opera as fragmented arias, opera as improvisation and opera as radical interdisciplinary collective migratory political practice.

Session 1: Guest presentation & discussions  (2 or 3 guest)

Session 2: Break out group discussions

Day 3

New stories require not only new form and aesthetics but also new methods and modalities. How do different voices might cohabitate- literally and figuratively- the same space without capitulating, assimilating, or forcing a cohesion?  How can different voices maintain their opacity (rather than the often idealised ‘harmony’) with each other, and how might this cacophony allow for new forms, voices, and hybrid languages to emerge?

Session 1: Guest presentation & discussions  (2  guest)

Session 2: Break out group experiments and improvisations

Session 3: Wrap up and going forward

Mentor:

Stacy Hardy is a writer and researcher, whose work explores questions of embodiment and the deep rooted connection between the personal and the social, the individual body and the larger social body.

Her short fiction is regularly published in journals and literary anthologies around the world and she was the winner of the 2018 Brittle Paper Award for African Fiction and a finalist in the 2018 Caine Prize. A collection of her short fiction, Because the Night was published by Pocko Books, London in 2015.

Her writing is often musical and she regularly collaborates with musicians, including a long term ongoing collaboration with Angolan composer Victor Gama on multimedia musical works that have been performed in Chicago, Berlin, Lisbon, Luanda, Cape Town, amongst other places.

Her experimental performance piece, Museum of Lungs, created together with Laila Soliman, and musicians Neo Muyanga and Nancy Mounir, premiered in Johannesburg (2018), followed by dates in Europe, including Kaserne, Basel and Spielart in Munich (2018 - 2019).

She worked as librettist on the opera WOMAN AT POINT ZERO with Laila Soliman and Bushra El Turk. Première Festival d’Aix en Provence 2022.

 Practical informations

 Application process

 Specifications

 Artistic requirements