This is an open call for performers to audition for the sensational Opera, Sensorium Ex. The call is for performers and people with disabilities from across Cape Town.
A word from Marlene le Roux:
The words that underscore this very vital collaboration are: accessibility, inclusiveness , opportunity equality and equity. For too long, there have been discussions, a rhetoric that pays lip service to Persons With Disabilities. This year’s ArtsAbility Festival at Artscape intends to change that narrative with these dynamic partnerships. It aims to challenge what it means to be human and to showcase how the Arts plays an integral role in achieving the wholeness we should all be striving for and ultimately how it contributes not only to the human being as individuals , but to a community, a society, a nation and the world at large.
Sensorium Ex is an opera for soloists, choir, chamber orchestra and electronics – exploring the nature of voice beyond language, what it means to be truly human, and how we find our sense of voice through our relationships with family, community and culture. A corporation conscripts three scientists, Mem, Mycelia, and Niles, to develop the final piece of a breakthrough Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithm. This final piece has always been excluded in AI research because it represents the realm of human experiences presumed “non-optimal.”
Mem, the lead researcher, is the mother of Kitsune, a child with a disability, and realizes the corporation has targeted her child’s genetic material to use for their program. Are these scientists the researchers or the experiment? And is there any escape? Holding the answers is a child who doesn’t speak but whose disabilities manifest an answer.
A mother’s love, science/tech ethics, romance, corporate greed, a mystical escape, and a robot named Sophia come together in this story about what it means to be human.
Please refer to the files below for detailed information regarding the various roles and the musical elements of the opera.
Auditions are to be submitted by video no later than 4 November
to Charne Hugo charnehugo@gmail.com or Yolanda Smith yolanda@hardhatter.co.za
Please note that if you are selected you will be required to attend rehearsals and participate in a scene performance between 21 and 29 November.
If you need any assistance with information or uploading of videos you can contact either:
Yolanda Smith yolanda@hardhatter.co.za or Charne Hugo charnehugo@gmail.com
