[OPERA CAPTIONS]

CAPTIONS [firm voice]: For a long, I’ve been in the background. Now it’s time for me to show up.
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What if captions ‘step up,’ ‘speak with’ you, and ‘tell’ you about their stories? Will you listen to them?

[opera captions] focuses on captions that bring together accessibility, inner and imagined voices, and improvisation. A semi-fiction, semi-translation, semi-poetry, semi-film, semi-music, and semi-theater performance, [opera captions] reimagines what captions can do beyond functioning as a speech conveyor and a sound interpreter in audiovisual media. This live experience features captions as “an actor” interacting with and personified by bodily-diverse human beings: a collective of New York composer-performers thingNY and wonderful viewers-audiences. [opera captions] invites you to celebrate the lives of captions that have been both cherished and hated.

Accessibility/things to anticipate:

• Captions will be the main performance elements. They will also be audible.
• There is no sound amplification, and the overall loudness will be moderate.
• A very small part of the performance features profanity.

[opera captions] is made possible by the support of The MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, and Mellon Foundation, and SubletSeries@HERE.


Jay Afrisando is an Indonesian composer, multimedia artist, researcher, and educator. He works on aural diversity, acoustic ecology, and cultural identity through multisensory and antidisciplinary practices. His works include the 5-channel film installation In Which to Trust? (2022) and the spatial composition Ungklang-Angklung (2019), among others. Collaborating with various artists and culture bearers, he has presented works in various scenes and places, including Sound Scene at Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Walker Art Center’s Virtual Cinema, ARGOS Projector: The Faraway Nearby, and Aural Diversity Conference. He has been awarded the MAP Fund 2022 and the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship 2021-22.  
https://www.jayafrisando.com/

Fri. May 26, 2023
HERE Arts
645 Sixth Ave
New York NY
7pm
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Tickets

[opera captions]
Created, directed, written and composed by:
Jay Afrisando

Performed by:
Gelsey Bell
Andrew Livingston
Erin Rogers
Dave Ruder
Jeffrey Young

Lighting Designer:
Christina Tang

Project Manager:
Terry Perdanawati

Graphic designer:
Jay Afrisando

Original photo:
​kinsum