VEHICLES OPERA

Operasonic

My opera for children, "Vehicles", has been produced successfully by Operasonic at the Riverfront Theatre, Newport, on March 2nd 2020 with funding from the John Fell Foundation for the production and HCP for the creative workshops exploring the opera’s theme of innovations in transport technology. 393 children attended the school’s performance, many of them having participated in the first of two creative workshops. The opera was due to be toured to other venues such as Didcot and Ellesmere Port in March, but these residencies have had to be postponed due to COVID-19. The present uncertainty about the reopening of theatres and the viability of performances involving singing has encouraged us to draw up an alternative plan for concluding the project and widening the range of potential audiences for VEHICLES. We are therefore filming the project in Newport on the week of November 16th 2020, so that VEHICLES can be released on-line as a series of six video episodes. Three videos for children exploring the engineering content associated with the opera have already been made, enabling the VEHICLES project (consisting of a school visit, an on-line filmed performance and the three videos) to be marketed to schools. We hope this will enable the opera to reach, in a deep, meaningful and informed way, a community of young people rarely addressed by academic research, as well as to investigate to what extent “Vehicles” can inspire young people to think differently about scientific careers such as engineering.