rough for opera #17 / WORKS
Speak Red (working title)
Santa Bušs (composer) and FXXX BXXXXX (librettist) Presented by Oedipa
Speak Red is a new opera inspired by the true story of Ruby McDonough, a remarkable woman who lives with aphasia. Aphasia is a widely misunderstood communication disability, which means Ruby is able to say only a few words. She also lives with right-side paralysis, but her intelligence is not affected.
Speak Red is being made through workshops with people living with aphasia and support from speech therapists at the UCL Communication Clinic, who are collaborators in the writing process and appear in the performance. Together, we hope to speak in bold, diverse languages about discrimination against disabled people, and a culture of ignoring allegations of sexual violence made by women.
The participants are a group of Londoners living with aphasia, invited to join the project with support from the Communication Clinic at UCL and Aphasia Re-Connect.
Dreaming Clouds Alex Ho (composer) Julia Cheng (choreographer)
Julia Cheng and Alex Ho (Performers)
Julia Cheng and Alex Ho explore and challenge the perception of Chinese-British identities through their multidisciplinary piece, Dreaming Clouds. Taking Cantonese Opera as their starting point, they look to create a visceral experience interrogating the intersections between themselves, music and dance, and Chinese and British cultures.
A Father Is Looking For His Daughter (working title)
Alex Mills (composer) Gareth Mattey (writer/director) Crispin Lord (director/designer)
Ella Taylor (Father)
A father searches for his daughter along possible and impossible borderlines. An auditor listens, edits, censors. A vocal scene on gender identity, borders, parenthood and recent political events.
A Father Is Looking For His Daughter (working title) is a short vocal scene that finds itself in the process of being redacted. Father has been separated from his daughter by the brutal actions of an unnamed state and consequently finds himself wandering a long desert border, seemingly forever. Simultaneously, Auditor, an agent of that same unnamed state is editing out any reference to the missing daughter, to anger, hurt, hate and pain and to Father’s trans identity. But Father carries on nonetheless – always wandering and searching for his daughter, always finding ways to evade the censors, clinging to whatever identity he has left.
rough for opera #17 / MAKERS
Speak Red (working title)
Santa Bušs studied at the Latvian Academy of Music and Hamburg University of Music and Theatre, and participated in the Jerwood Opera Writing Programme 2014-15; the 2016-17 Festival d’Aix Women Opera Makers Workshop led by Katie Mitchell, and Helsinki Festival’s Music Theatre Creation Lab. Santa’s work has been performed by ensembles including Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain, United Instruments of Lucilin, Ensemble 21 de la HEM, Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, and Latvian National Symphony Orchestra.
FXXX BXXXXX was the winner of the 2015 Genesis Future Directors Award at the Young Vic, and then held the 2015 Lina Bo Bardi Fellowship, appointed by the British Council and Sesc São Paulo. In 2014 he libretto-wrote and directed The Anatomy of Melancholy, a new opera about depression, funded by The Wellcome Trust and ACE. He is currently creating a series of installation-based performances around a new choral commission by Kate Whitley, for Strike a Light and Gloucester History festivals.
Oedipa produces new work for performance in opera and music theatre. Oedipa aims to produce work ethically in a way which is politically engaged. Oedipa has commissioned and produced the new opera The Anatomy of Melancholy (2014); Binary Optional, the first performances in the UK by female baritone Lucia Lucas (2017); and architectural installation- performances No ball games (2016) and MESS (2017). Oedipa was a Links partner at the Royal Opera House in 2017-18. www.oedipa.org
Dreaming Clouds
Alex Ho is a composer of contemporary classical music in London. He has worked with the London Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, Barbican Centre, Psappha Ensemble, Juice Ensemble, and Roderick Williams. He is one of Sound and Music’s ‘New Voices 2018’ and is the co-founder of Tangram, an artist collective creating and curating new Chinese music. Alex studied at Oxford, graduating with first-class honours, before completing a master’s at Cambridge with the Arthur Bliss Prize. www.alexhocomposer.com
Julia Cheng is a Luton-London based creative director with extensive expertise in dance and self-produced work. A versatile performer and choreographer, she founded House of Absolute in 2014, an all-female collective of multidisciplinary dancers. Julia has considerable stage and theatre commissions including works for London Jazz Festival, Sadler’s Wells Theatre, V&A Museum, Southbank Centre, Birmingham Hippodrome, Contour London Symphony Orchestra, British Council Cairo, China Changing Festival, Jazz Refreshed, Love Supreme Festival, and University of Hertfordshire. www.houseofabsolute.com
A Father Is Looking For His Daughter
Alex Mills is a London-based composer. His work has been performed at the Barbican Centre, LSO St Luke’s, Cheltenham Music Festival, Kilkenny Arts Festival, the Sónar music festival (Barcelona) and on BBC Radio 3 and 4. His first opera, Dear Marie Stopes, premiered in London in August 2018 to widespread acclaim and will be performed again later this year at Kings Place. The Guardian have described his work as “music of supernatural poignancy, melodic but otherworldly, narratively urgent but poetically impressionistic.” www.alexmills.info
Gareth Mattey is a writer and director based in London and originally from the North West. Their work is often focused on queer identity, absurd worlds and multi-media landscapes. They recently graduated from Guildhall School of Music and Drama with a Distinction in their MA in Opera Making and Writing. Upcoming work includes directing Peter Brook’s Pelleas & Melisande (Playground Theatre), and writing and directing An Inventory of Me (The Lowry) and Bermondsey, 1983 (Snape Maltings).
Crispin Lord is a London-based queer performance maker, whose work is primarily concerned with creating dialogue between Live Art and Music Theatre. His recent opera directing credits include Last Thursday (RCSSD), A Hand of Bridge (Waterperry Opera Festival) and Carmen (Gala Theatre). He is currently a Staff Director at ENO but has also recently assisted Keith Warner, Stephen Barlow, Jack Furness and Laura Attridge. Crispin also runs MaloMalo, a collaborative platform for experimental queer performance, with which he will present his new Installation “…Was Already Screaming Its Name” in Berlin later this year. www.crispinlord.com
Dominic Haddock is the Head of Development and Communications at English Touring Opera. He was previously Director of Development at Spitalfields Music and Executive producer of OperaUPClose. Dominic is a Director of the Opera and Music Theatre Forum and a trustee of Talawa, the UK’s foremost Black Theatre Company.
rough for opera #17 / PROGRAMME NOTES & BIOGS
SPEAK RED
Santa Bušs & company (composer)
FXXX BXXXXX & company (librettist)
Presented by Oedipa
Alice Purton (cello/vocals)
Heloise Werner (cello/vocals)
Eunice, Gerald, Haide, Isabella, Jawad, Jayne, Jesus, Joe, Kim, Laide, Nick, Pierre, Sam, Sandie, Yazid
With support from Carol Sacchett, Carolyn Bruce and Michael Dean at UCL’s Division of Psychology and Language Sciences and Communication Clinic.
Speak Red is the working title for a project currently in development. We are a group of artists and performers with and without communication disabilities. Together, we are exploring how opera can be a tool for inclusive expression.
We are presenting a few moments from the story of Ruby Mcdonough. Ruby is a living American woman who has aphasia (we will explain what aphasia is during the performance). By fighting discrimination, Ruby changed the way the law works in the USA. We would like to tell her story from our perspectives, and share our own experiences with you too.
Santa Bušs is a Latvian composer interested in detailed pre-compositional process and working with extra-musical ideas. Although her main focus has been instrumental music, she has more recently pursued a deep interest in the voice and different forms of interdisciplinary collaboration. She studied composition and musicology at the Latvian Academy of Music and Hamburg University of Music and Theatre. Her works have been performed throughout Europe, the Americas, Asia and Australia.
FXXX BXXXXX is a writer and director. He is currently collaborating with composers including Tansy Davies, Richard Thomas and Kate Whitley on new operas, musicals and immersive installations. FXXX set up Oedipa in 2017, to produce work with a focus on challenging imbalances of power in an ethical way. http://www.oedipa.org
Thanks to Ruby Mcdonough for giving us permission to share her story; to Wendy Murphy for introducing us; and to Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg and enoa for their support.
A FATHER IS LOOKING FOR HIS DAUGHTER
12 mins
Alex Mills (composer)
Gareth Mattey (librettist)
Crispin Lord (director)
Ashil Mistry (condutor)
Ella Taylor (Father)
Rosie Middleton (Auditor)
Cecelia Bignall (cello)
Callum Huggan (percussion)
A Father Is Looking For His Daughter is a short vocal scene about gender identity, borders, parenthood and recent political events – a scene that finds itself in the process of being redacted. Father has been separated from his daughter by the brutal actions of an unnamed state and consequently finds himself wandering a long desert border, seemingly forever. Simultaneously, Auditor, an agent of that same state is editing out any reference to the missing daughter, to anger, to hurt, to hate, to pain and to Father’s trans identity. Her goal is his erasure, as he asks the world – “have you seen her?”
Alex Mills studied music at Cambridge University and privately with composer Raymond Yiu. His first opera, Dear Marie Stopes, premiered in London in August 2018 to widespread acclaim and will be revived later this year at Kings Place. His work has been performed at the Barbican, LSO St Luke’s, Cheltenham Music Festival, Café OTO, Kilkenny Arts Festival, the Wellcome Collection museum, the Sónar music festival, and on BBC Radio 3 and 4. He’s written for Liam Byrne, Hermes Experiment, Ligeti Quartet, Juice Vocal Ensemble, and Eighth Blackbird. He is currently working on new projects for the V&A, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and Kew Gardens.
Gareth Mattey is a writer, director and filmmaker, originally from the Wirral and now based in London. They first became interested in opera and music theatre while studying at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, especially focusing on modern and contemporary work. They continued at Trinity Hall to study for a research MPhil on the relationship of opera and cinema. As a writer, Gareth recently pursued an MA in Opera Making and Writing with Guildhall School of Music and Drama, writing the chamber opera Reel Woman with Pedro Lima. Since then, they have continued to write and develop new works, including a new chamber opera with Lewis Coenen-rowe, an ensemble work with Robert Reid Allan for Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, and an experimental text for music improvisation for FAWN Chamber Creative in Toronto. They are very keen to continue building on these relationships as they commit to prioritising the role of queer characters, structures and worlds within contemporary music. As a director, Gareth has most recently directed Pelléas et Mélisande for Opera on the Move at the Playground Theatre and the Scenes for the Royal Academy Opera at the Susie Sainsbury Theatre. They have worked as an assistant director with organisations including British Youth Opera and the Helios Collective while recently observing work with Music Theatre Wales and the Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre. Gareth is also a filmmaker, having written and directed their first short Quartet with Random Acts North while recently directing a 360-video aria fragment from La Boheme. They sit as a trainee board member with the Hebrides Ensemble. Upcoming projects include directing a Mozart synth opera project with _REMIX Ensemble, a Snape Maltings residency with Robert Reid Allan and an opera for virtual reality with Pedro Lima. Crispin Lord is a multi-disciplinary performance maker based in London. His work is centred on queer structures, the body in motion, insidious violence, activism, and the intersection of Opera and Live Art practices. As a Director, his previous credits include, Last Thursday (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama), A Hand of Bridge (Waterperry Opera Festival), Carmen and Orpheus and Eurydice (Durham Opera Ensemble). In October this year, he will direct his new play PREPARE IT, MY BODY at a showcase evening at the Barbican Pit Theatre. He is also a Staff Director at English National Opera and works internationally as a freelance Assistant Director. His assisting credits include Britten on Film (National Opera Studio, Keith Warner), La Boheme (ENO, Natascha Metherall), Il Barbieri di Siviglia (Grange Festival, Stephen Barlow), Don Giovanni (Teatru Manoel, Jack Furness), The Lighthouse (Shadwell Opera, Jack Furness) and Written on Skin (Mariinsky Theatre, Jack Furness). Crispin also works as a Designer, and has created sets and costumes for a number of theatre projects, including Curlew River (Ante Terminum Productions) and Don Giovanni (Teatru Manoel), and for films such as Wie Verklart: Wesendonck-Lieder. Since 2018, he has worked with Composer Jonathan Packham to interrogate the performative capabilities of Virtual Reality and its conceptual ties to fluid understandings of gender and sexuality. Crispin and Jonathan presented their first work untitled (THEY) last year in London, and are currently working on a longer “operatic” work, untitled (THERE). He also created a VR film with the Live Art Development Agency in September 2018 (Self Portrait Experiments in 360). Crispin is also Artistic Director of MaloMalo, an experimental, queer performance group; in June 2019, they will travel to Berlin to premiere a new installation work commissioned by Pornceptual, a Berlin-based sex-positive art collective.ReplyReply to allForward
DREAMING CLOUDS 10 mins
Alex Ho (composer, co-director, performer)
Juila Cheng (choreographer, co-director, performer)
Julia Cheng and Alex Ho explore the perception of Chinese-British identities through their multidisciplinary piece, Dreaming Clouds. Taking Cantonese Opera as their starting point, they look to create a visceral experience interrogating the intersections between themselves, music and dance, and Chinese and British cultures.
The piece follows a range of abstract characters/emotions as a replacement of the narrative. The hope is to reflect upon the complex and often non-linear relationships that diasporic communities often encounter with their cultural heritage, and in doing so, broaden our understanding of cross-cultural existence and its importance in today’s society
Alex Ho is a British-Chinese composer whose work examines Chinese and Western cultures as a means of exploring the perception of diasporic identity. A composer on the London Symphony Orchestra’s Soundhub scheme and one of Sound and Music’s ‘New Voices 2018′, Alex has had compositions performed by the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, Psappha Ensemble, Juice Ensemble, Roderick Williams, and the choirs of Christ Church Cathedral and Merton College, Oxford. His works have been heard in venues across the UK, Canada, Italy and China, featuring on platforms including SoundState Festival (London), Hearing China (Shanghai), Chinese Arts Now (London), Sound Festival (Aberdeen), nonclassical (London), Cheltenham Music Festival, Oxford Lieder Festival, and HighScore Festival (Pavia, Italy). Alex was awarded joint-winner of the Philip Bates Composition Competition in 2016 and was featured on the British Music Collection’s ’50 Things’, a series offering a “bold new perspective on the recent history of new music in the UK”. He is the co-founder of Tangram with whom he is a recipient of the artist development bursary from Chinese Arts Now. Alex studied Music at Oxford University and graduated with first-class honours. Following this, he completed a master’s in composition at Cambridge University where he was awarded the Arthur Bliss Prize in Composition for his final portfolio that attained the highest mark across the university. Alex is grateful for the support he has received to further his musical development from PRS Foundation, RVW Trust, Les Azuriales Opera Trust, the William Barclay Squire Fund, Susie Thompson and Jesus College, Cambridge.
https://www.alexhocomposer.com/
Luton-based Julia Cheng is a hip-hop dancer and choreographer who founded House of Absolute in 2014. Passionate about multidisciplinary work, her technique grows from breaking the expectations of given styles, crossing genres by combining her hip-hop foundation with contemporary dance, music, painting, visual art and poetry. Julia’s early works derived from investigating identity, gender and displacement, largely through her own experiences as a first generation British-born Chinese female artist. At jams and battles, she quickly noticed a lack of female dancers and made it her mission to increase representation of women and ethnic minorities in the arts. This includes her piece on the female form and the voice of women in the media – CONTOUR (2018, London Symphony Orchestra) – which included poppin’ alongside a classical and experimental electronic music composition. Community and youth projects are a big part of Cheng’s work; she has been involved in programs like ON MASS (2017, Roundhouse), assisting in choreography for 13-25 year olds across the amateur, circus and street dance disciplines. Cheng’s practice is hugely influence by the issues that young people face in society and is committed to finding ways to empower them through her work.
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