SENSORIUM EX Will Make its World Premiere Next Year

Paola Prestini and Brenda Shaughnessy's expansive, multi-modal opera Sensorium Ex will have its world premiere May 22-25, 2025, presented by Omaha's Common Senses Festival in a co-production by VisionIntoArt and Beth Morrison Projects, directed by Jerron Herman and Jay Scheib. 

Operating at the intersection of AI, disability, and the arts, Sensorium Ex explores the fundamental question of what it means to have voice, and the nature of voice beyond language. The libretto, by poet Brenda Shaughnessy, tells a dystopian tale centered on a scientist/mother and her a nonverbal, nonambulatory child with multiple disabilities, as they resist a villainous corporate entity's attempts to harvest their human data in order to create a AI that will eventually replace people.

The opera stars mezzo-soprano Hailey McAvoy, Kader Ziouecheand Jakob Jordan – who, along with other members of the creative team, have the neurological condition Cerebral Palsy – mezzo-soprano Laurie Rubin and soprano Ju Hyeon Han, who are blind, baritones Lucia Lucas and Joshua Jeremiah, and other cast members to be announced at a later date. 

With a cast of predominantly disabled performers, Sensorium Ex aims to bring about major transformations in how the opera industry supports disabled artists and shapes narratives of disability. The project is devising new artistic practices which center disability equity and access at all steps in the process - pioneering inclusive casting practices; co-creating the aesthetics and expressions of the opera with disabled cast members and artists; and designing a fully inclusive and accessible audience experience. The end result will be the Sensorium Codex: a framework for driving disability equity and co-creation in opera, that will be made available to all performing arts institutions.

Another aspect of the work is Sensorium AI, an international research, arts and technology project with the aim of democratizing the development of voice-recognition AI, and expanding possibilities for creative expression of voice. The technology, along with the data gathered for it, will be incorporated into the opera itself, as well as an interactive art installation (Sensorium AI: Duets). It will also serve as the first stepping stone for further AI and AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) development, with a specific focus on strengthening the experience of voice for people with voice-related disabilities, speech impairments, and atypical speech patterns. The ultimate goal is an open source app which can be used by other artists, performers, or the general public to work with synthetic voice in any creative capacity.

Said Prestini of the project: "For the last 7 years, I’ve been creating, co-producing, and living with Sensorium Ex. Brenda Shaughnessy's rich setting has allowed us to create an entirely new operatic world, one that envisions a truly intersectional approach to disability. In opening up the often-inflexible space of opera to different needs, we have seen firsthand how the system doesn’t work for many people, and our solution has been to create a dedicated advisory board to guide us and vet us, every step of the way. Change on this scale truly takes a village, and together, we have created a space that allows us to consistently redefine who gets to have a voice in society."

Said librettist Brenda Shaughnessy: "Making this opera meant imagining and creating ways to center non-verbal communication and non-ambulatory life paths. We discovered it’s up to us to learn new language-modes, new ways of understanding each other across differences, communities, abilities, limits, senses, and vulnerabilities. We hope to show that process, revealing a mind-altering new perspective on how we all live our varied lives, with varied abilities, with similar desires to connect and find meaning, as a matter of survival."

Said Kate Weitz, Director & Founder of the Common Senses Festival: "As a festival with a mission focused on arts, science and disability acceptance, it’s impossible to imagine a better fit than Sensorium Ex. We’re thrilled to present this unprecedented world opera premiere and for the opportunity to promote and expand the Sensorium AI and Codex projects."

Sensorium Ex is commissioned by VisionIntoArt in association with Common Senses Festival, Jill and Bill Steinberg, and Beth Morrison Projects, developed and produced by VisionIntoArt and Beth Morrison Projects. The project has also received more than $1 million in support from the Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and has been workshopped at the Reach at the Kennedy Center, and at South Africa's Artscape Theatre Centre.

To post a comment, you must register and login.