FEDORA - Woman at Point Zero

GENERALI
Opera Prize 2020
Nominee

Back to 2020 Nominees

Jury
Nominee

Woman at Point Zero

Belgium
LOD muziektheater

Crowdfunding Results

€775
collected

donations closed

Woman at Point Zero - LOD Muziektheater © Aida Elkashef i

About the Project

Woman at Point Zero is a new opera based on the classic 1975 novel by the Egyptian writer Nawal El Sadaawi. From this universal story of exploitation, erasure and the search for freedom, composer Bushra El-Turk, director Laila Soliman, writer Stacy Hardy and filmmaker Aida Elkashef create a new multimedia production that weaves together diverse creative visions and challenges conventions. Opera as a powerful voice for a new wave of feminism without borders.

Woman at Point Zero is a new opera based on the classic 1975 novel by the Egyptian writer Nawal El Sadaawi. El Sadaawi describes her meeting with Firdaus, a woman on death row in Cairo, who shares her life story the night before her execution…

Burrowing into the hidden places where fear, violence and love are tangled together, Firdaus describes how she is trapped in a vicious cycle of abuse relationships, until the moment she commits a bloody crime in self-defense.

From this universal story of exploitation, erasure and the search for freedom, composer Bushra El-Turk, director Laila Soliman, writer Stacy Hardy and filmmaker Aida Elkashef create a new multimedia production that weaves together diverse creative visions and challenges conventions, to reanimate opera as a powerful voice for a new wave feminism without borders.

Intertwining lyrical poetry and genre-defying music with compelling documentary testimonies from contemporary women who committed similar acts, it presents a chorus of women’s voices — once deemed insolent, damaged, and shameful, now in the process of reclaiming and telling their own stories with wry humor, tender intimacy, and fierce freedom.

Why should you support us?

Woman at Point Zero is a new opera that addresses themes and questions that are burningly urgent. Questions related to violence against women, questions about incarceration and the prison system. This production pays tribute to women around the world who speak out loud and publicly against violence and oppression. More than ever there is a need to reimagine what art can and could be. Opera as an art form that gives people a voice. In this case: all the women that Woman at Point Zero represents. You can help reinvent opera.

Who are we?

LOD muziektheater is a Ghent production company for opera and musical theatre, a creative base for performing artists.

Composer BUSHRA EL-TURK, author STACY HARDY, director LAILA SOLIMAN and filmmaker AIDA ELKASHEF turn this 1975 novel into a multimedia production that collages documentary film and fiction, poetry and narrative, Western and non-Western musical traditions. Together, they form an interdisciplinary creative team of four powerful women from the Global South. They are advocates of a new politics of solidarity, wanting to decolonise and democratise opera and engage key concepts in feminist thought, namely “sisterhood,” “experience,” “community”. Their work aims to make visible what was formerly and forcefully hidden: trauma, violence, liberation, strength, and joy.

Bushra El-Turk

Composer

Laila Soliman

Stage Director

Stacy Hardy

Librettist

Aida Elkashef

Video Artist

Partners

Concertgebouw Brugge

Belgium

DeSingel

Belgium

Festival d'Aix

France

Muziektheater Transparant

Belgium

Royal Opera House

United Kingdom

Shubbak Festival

United Kingdom

Snape Maltings

United Kingdom

News

Jury Nominee, FEDORA Prizes, FEDORA Artists Series, Nominee

LOD muziektheater

Meet the creators behind Woman at point zero!

13 October 2020

Meet the creators behind the projects nominated for the FEDORA Prizes!
Discover Bushra El-Turk, Composer and Laila Soliman, the Stage Director of "Woman at Point Zero" by LOD Muziektheater, nominee of the FEDORA Opera Prize 2020!

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