MISSION STATEMENT

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Woman at Point Zero is a show created by four women artists of mixed artistic backgrounds with Arab, Mediterranean and European heritage. The piece undauntedly crosses boundaries and challenges our perception of what opera can mean and represent as well as its very style and nature of story telling. 

 

The piece is inspired by Nawal el Saadawi’s seminal novel Woman at Point Zero, in which she has a meeting in a Cairo prison cell with an extraordinary woman prisoner called Firdaus, a prostitute sentenced to death for killing her pimp. Our vision and realisation of the piece embraces Firdaus’ rebellion against the system and her consequent existential freedom, which she found by choosing death rather than asking for pardon to live a compromised life in prison. 

 

Central to our working method is a truly collaborative approach, with the roles of the creative team being much more fluid than in a conventional process. Our enquiry into the nature and interconnectedness of sound, breath and gesture, complemented by a poetic, rhythmical, almost minimalist libretto, created the basis for a raw and knife language apt to reflect the horrors faced by Firdaus. The musicians, an ensemble of ancient wind instruments and all skilled improvisers, interact with Firdaus musically and physically, thus creating identities beyond their traditional roles as music-players. 

The strength of our working relationship is our openness to the process and the permeability of the boundaries within which we are working. The genre of opera comes with a distinct and imposing history. We want to be part of the development of opera in the 21st century by posing questions to the status quo and unleashing new approaches, through the artistic material and the process by which we create it.