Rosetta Life, Garsington Opera and the Victoria and Albert Museum Present HOSPITAL PASSION PLAY

Seventy performers, including a choir of twenty stroke survivors, will perform on stage at the Victoria and Albert Museum alongside films of intimate performances from hospitals across London and Buckinghamshire. Composed by Orlando Gough, Hospital Passion Play weaves stories of rehabilitation from those who have had a brain or spinal injury into a new opera. The concert is part of health charity Rosetta Life's three-year arts-into-health intervention Stroke Odysseys. It is part of a series of opera performances at the V&A, designed to bring opera to a wider audience and to coincide with the V&A's exhibition Opera: Passion, Power and Politics (30 September 2017 - 25 February 2018).

The choir will be made up of Lambeth Stroke Choir, Shout at Cancer choir - a vocal group that helps throat cancer patients who have had their voice boxes removed - and Garsington Adult Community Chorus. They will be directed by Karen Gillingham, Creative Director of Garsington Opera's Learning & Participation Programme. The performance shows that there is a life after traumatic injury, offering visibility and agency to those who have been touched by it.

Rosetta Life and Garsington Opera are collaborating to develop Hospital Passion Play throughout the summer. They will create a series of filmed movement and song scenes performed by people accessing spinal and neurological rehabilitation, who will be supported by professional singers, musicians and dancers. The films will be integrated into the performance at the V&A. They are being prepared through workshops exploring identity after traumatic injury and in hospital, which are taking place across neuro rehabilitation units of London hospitals and the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville. The final performance at the V&A will be filmed, and screened at venues across the UK.

Rosetta Life has been partnering with artists and health professionals to co-create Stroke Odysseys, working with South London's stroke community to create a music and movement performance arts intervention that improves the quality of life and sense of well-being of those affected by traumatic brain injury such as stroke. Hospital patients who have experienced a traumatic brain injury experience the severe loss of confidence and self-esteem that comes with an altered capacity to move, speak and express themselves. Stroke Odysseys is being developed to be widely replicated and used. Rosetta Life has also formed a partnership with Garsington Opera who have been working at the National Spinal Injuries Centre to explore the possibilities of widening access to the performance arts intervention to include spinal injury.

Lucinda Jarrett, who is leading the project, said, "Hospital Passion Play is an amazing opportunity for people to recover their identity through performance after losing it after brain or spinal injury. Reconnecting to our bodies, our voices and our stories enables us to remember who we are and find ourselves again in the crowd."

Kate Bailey, curator of the V&A's exhibition Opera: Passion, Power and Politics, said, "This year we are exploring the power of opera at the V&A, so we are delighted that this innovative new performance will take place at the Museum. It has been totally inspirational to see how the exhibition can be a catalyst for such an important medical and performance project and to understand how opera can be used to improve patients' recovery."

The need for Stroke Odysseys has been identified by a wide network of clinicians, health care practitioners, patients and family members who are guiding the direction of the project through a series of practice research workshops. Following the project, a clinical evaluation report will be released to assess its effectiveness and make recommendations for future implementation.

For a window on the project to date visit www.strokeodysseys.org.

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