A scratch night with first performances of new music for the stage from young composers Kate Whitley and Mike Christie, a Q and A with Professor Paul Barker and a dj set from composer Isambard Khroustaliov.

Scars – Kate Whitley (music) Stephanie Ndoungo (libretto)

The Miller’s Wife – Mike Christie (music and libretto)

Q and A with Prof. Paul Barker (Central School of Speech and Drama)

Isambard Khroustaliov (dj set)

Mike Christie presents an excerpt from his full length opera The Miller’s Wife, a village tale of forbidden love, long kept secrets and tragedy averted inspired by a discovery Mike made in his own family tree.

Kate Whitley makes a welcome return to rough for opera for a third performance with Scars, a new work for soprano developed from a recent collaboration between the human rights charity Freedom from Torture and its Write to Life creative writing group, opera-club-night Carmen Elektra, and record label ‘Nonclassical’. Scars’ text is based on Write to Life member Stephanie Ndoungo’s Reporting to the Doctor, an account of her experience of having a medical examination of the scars on her body, on the basis of which evidence to support her case for asylum was put together.

 

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