The lockdown opera collaboration
Two lockdowns and two cancelled opening dates later, we are still waiting to open Current, Rising on the stage of the Linbury Theatre at the Royal Opera House.
The upside is that I could finally get some uninterrupted, in-person time with the creative team I’ve been leading for almost a year now – opera director and video artist Netia Jones, award-winning designer Jo Scotcher and composer Samantha Fernando.
The interview below is an unedited transcript of our conversation about how to define opera and the making of the world’s first opera in hyper-reality.
You can learn more about how Current, Rising was made in this Royal Opera House video featuring Netia, Jo, Sam and the rest of the team.
What is the inspiration behind Current, Rising?
Netia: As we were developing the idea of what could be explored in virtual reality, we became aware that it’s not a space for a traditional linear narrative but something a bit more expansive. So we were interested in the idea of creating very immersive landscapes and a journey. We looked at it more like a site-specific production.
It’s a journey that the audience goes through and therefore the audience becomes the protagonist, they are the characters in the story.
What is the story and what’s it about?
Netia: The story is inspired by the idea of the liberation of the spirit Ariel at the end of The Tempest. It explores the ideas of isolation, confinement and liberation, and the responsibilities of freedom.
Ariel is a spirit in The Tempest who leads the protagonist through the play and in Current, Rising the voices of Ariel lead the audience through the journey.
Current, Rising takes you on a journey where you are the main protagonist in a story about freedom and collective responsibility – image by Jo Scotcher/ Royal Opera House
Jo, how did you approach designing for Current, Rising? How was that different from designing a stage show?
Jo: The parameters for designing for a VR experience are really expanded. We were very much designing a physical journey as well as an emotional narrative one.
The confines in a theatre are very obvious, you are seated, you have fixed sight lines, whereas with this we had an environment that was aurally, visually and spatially limitless. We took a very poetic tack on designing in that way.
When you design towards an emotional journey, you discover new parameters.
I think one of those is to look at it together with a very complex beautiful piece of composition. There is a marrying of the worlds happening in the piece, which you can’t quite achieve in a theatre.
Could you speak to the challenges of designing for that kind of environment? What did you have to think differently about?
Jo: I guess it’s a new set of ‘language groups.’ We have our theatre speak and Figment Productions (the virtual reality production partner) have a more ‘digital language’ going on, so trying to overlap those in a meaningful way was the biggest challenge.
We made a step towards that helped by the frequency that we spoke and forced creative conversations and problem-solving – we really had to do that in a very joined up way.
We had to enforce that because there were so many language and understanding barriers. I would say formalising that from the start would be a great way to do it in the future.
Creativity flows in both directions, but opening that flow and keeping it going is a vital element to getting to where we are.
Netia: I feel that on this project there’s not quite such a thing as the designer/ director dynamic - it’s not separate, there’s a lot of crossing over. It’s very collaborative in that way – and it’s a very different process from say if I’d been looking or listening to a score that already existed, that had its own parameters already. Even on site-specific projects, I’d never quite done that before – imagining an experience for an audience and piecing that together into a piece of theatre.
Sam, what are the opportunities in composing for a hyper reality opera? What are the challenges of doing that?
Sam: Because it’s all being transmitted via headphones, you’re able to create a kind of intimacy that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to create onstage.
You can whisper in people’s ears, you can create very quiet sounds that are audible to everybody experiencing the piece, I was also able to think about voices in 3D and have the voice placed in different parts of the room or the scene.
This really came to the fore in the last section when I had one singer but we had her voice iterated eight times. You can hear spatialisation and the text is fragmented over those eight versions of the soprano, which was really exciting and I’ve not worked in that way before.
Netia, what do you feel like you really had to think differently about, what was the point where you felt you were really pushed as a director?
Netia: Character. Because we discovered quite early on that the least fruitful part of virtual reality was the iteration of human beings in virtual reality because they are very unreal.
It’s hard to emotionally connect to humans in virtual reality because they are less real than even figures or shadows of humans. They are inhuman.
And so we took a completely different tack. We’re telling a story with design and musical tools but without the traditional idea of human interaction and characters. It’s completely different in that way, but I still think it’s an opera. I believe that opera is boundary-less and it can be anything but even for the sceptics, it does explore what opera can or might be.
Jo: When you sit in a single place and you watch something on stage, there is a convention and it’s partly removed from you - there’s always a detachment from the stage but you connect with the humans and the story in front of you.
And we found that in VR, the most human and the most compelling thing was the voice and the message and the narrative. And so by removing any other illustrative qualities of that in the form of character, it allowed it to be its own strength.
A VR grab from Current, Rising in which ‘the sky collapses and explodes’ – image by Figment Productions
Netia: It leaves your imagination doing that part of the work. VR doesn’t leave much to the imagination because it’s all built in, there is so much information. On stage, you might have a grey box which you then believe is a car or a house, because your imagination takes that leap and you are in that space. In VR, there isn’t a lot of imaginative space so that’s why we came away from the human.
Jo: And I think that translates to the whole environment. The more we invested in the poetic iteration, the more compelling it seemed to be.
And it was the same with any material in the piece. We took an expression of them and we went - ok let’s take the journeys through the doorways, it’s not about the physicality of the material.
The sea is not a sea, it’s an inky pool that reflects the sound waves and is lit from above but it feels like being on the sea. There are references you understand but we have removed them from reality, they are abstracted.
Netia: And every time you made that decision, it got better, it became like theatre.
It’s like when you invest in puppets being alive on stage.
Netia: Exactly. The less literal it was, the better. And that was consistent right from the beginning.
We knew that it was a short space of time, and so it felt right that we approached it as if it were an opera poem.
You need to say what you want to say in very few words and allow the rest just be. Already it’s quite demanding on the richness of it.
Jo: And what afforded us in the final stages is that it gives us a malleable quality that we can then cue into the points in the storytelling. Because we weren’t dealing with literal solid things, it made us more responsive to emotions and emotional impact.
Sam, what did you have to think differently about?
Sam: A lot of it had to do with process, that was probably the main challenge. Being so highly collaborative from the start was beautiful, because you are feeding off everyone, but equally it’s challenging because you are getting that feedback and you need to work out how to take that onboard. And also it’s a vulnerability because you’re sharing sketches and drafts, and you have to be vulnerable in order to collaborate.
The composing part was freeing more than anything, because when you have restrictions, it provides a point of inspiration, it forces you to think creatively.
It’s not quite a film score, it’s very much a music-led experience but at the same time there were also these filmic aspects where visuals and music had to fit together.
Do you think the fact that we were creating this in lockdown affected what you were composing?
Sam: Not necessarily from a point of inspiration, or I haven’t got the distance to say yet, but the pandemic did allow something I hope I’ll be able to do in the future, which is that I had that relationship with Anna (soprano) and Ashley (pianist). They received sections of the music and then they just recorded them – Anna on her iPhone, and then Ashley mixed them together so that we had a demo to share with the creative team.
Actually that was a really interesting compositional tool for me, because then I was able to hear my music back as I was composing it rather than waiting until much later on in the process. It wasn’t very difficult to do, but I would never have thought to have done before had it not been for the pandemic.
A VR grab from Current, Rising in which audiences step through a door and onto an open sea – image by Figment Productions
It’s such an unusual experience of opera. What do you hope people will feel when they’re in it and afterwards?
Netia: Each person experiencing it will take something different from it. There is a guiding line that is a trail - the voice of Ariel and the idea of Ariel. Personally I hope that people will come in and take away from a very personal interpretation – what is your responsibility when it comes to freedom?
Because it’s so immersive and you’re in it, it would be very nice if your connection with the music is very intimate – that you’re really communicating directly with the score that Sam made. The music is very emotional.
Jo: To second that, the intimacy of it allows a moment of reflection, it genuinely gives you space to be completely alone and you’re experiencing something so personal and reflective.
There’s an opportunity to take a much bigger responsibility for meaning-making in the piece. You’re given the space to express something.
And I think that’s quite rare and that’s quite interesting.
Sam: Having just gone through it, it’s a very striking experience, and something quite fresh. I hope other people will find the same and they will see the potential of the medium. It’s such a taster of what we can create in this form.
How do you reflect on the experience now?
Jo: I think it’s been incredible. I remember those little moments with Sam when she shared her work – I’ve never worked with a composer like that.
Netia: No, because composers never get this involved. And we had our regular meetings every week with everybody there - it made such a difference. Really brilliant and so simple. And it makes for the most brilliant team spirit. Everybody is super plugged in. Quite often a composer would never meet a designer on an opera project, which is absurd. It makes no sense.
What do you think is the legacy of a project like this - for you personally and for opera as a form?
Sam: What it says is that we have to rethink what format opera can take. That’s really important. It allows the audience to be a participant too, which I think is very exciting.
It’s an avenue that hasn’t been explored that much and it’s making use of technologies we have today. There are so many more things in our arsenal now that we can make use of, we’d be stupid not to utilise those. It’s in its infancy still, and it has so much potential.
Jo: I guess the institution of art and what that means is something I’ve always felt outside of. In every avenue I’ve created work in, I’ve never been interested in the main stage and that has made for very open work - conceptually, access-wise, hierarchically.
But with this project, none of us have come to this with any preconceptions or ideas of hierarchy, which is a great starting point to create something new.
Why is it a great piece of art?
Netia: It’s not my position to say. It’s very interesting to be involved in because my main interest in life is expanding the idea of what opera can be. The other thing that I believe in the most is being a part of the world we live in now, in a place that looks forward.
This is technology that’s not going away, it hasn’t even reached its tipping point.
But it seems likely that something like this will become part of our lives and sharing stories.
It seemed a perfect moment to explore how to use this technology in this particular year and context. It has been totally fascinating for that reason.
Jo: I think it’s a great piece of art because I’ve always been interested in experience and narrative sense-making. And this is a whole new palette of ways and ingredients to create that. Opera is utterly unique in its history and form that it’s developed in, and so is VR and when you take those two experiences, they sit on a different polarity to each other.
So to fuse them together and to have a beautiful piece of composition, which follows a really inspiring piece of narrative, and to have the skills of a VR company turn towards something about emotion and connection. Both of these tectonic, different types of work are bending in the outsider direction, they are bending against norm as they intertwine.
Those difficult, gnarly spaces in that fusion are the spaces that I really thrive in, because you form your own parameters and rules. As a result, you tend to make more interesting connections.
And I think that’s why it’s a really beautiful piece of art – everyone stepped, excitedly and willingly into this challenging space in between and I believe that’s where great art is made.
Thanks for reading! To learn more about my experience of producing Current, Rising, head to the Digital Works podcast.
In conversation with Ash Mann, Managing Director of Substrakt, I discuss leading remote creative teams, how technologists and theatre makers can best work together and how to design audience experiences for emotional impact.