A way to co-create online

Interview with Bruno Homen from Irish National Opera

We talk to the amazing Bruno Homen, who runs the Technology, Production, Communication and Image department at SAMP (Sociedade Artística Musical dos Pousos), a music school located in Leiria, Portugal. Bruno successfully utilised the Co-Creation Stage in SAMP’s incredibly ambitious O Tempo (Somos Nós), an opera that was co-created with young prisoners in Leiria prison and their families.

Can you introduce yourself and what you do at SAMP?

I'm from Tomar where I started to learn music and saxophone. Whilst I attended the university music course I had an internship that led me to SAMP School of Arts in 2007. Then I became a teacher of the school. I've kept playing as a music professional while teaching at SAMP, also taking the role of Pedagogical Director for some years. Nowadays I'm still playing saxophone professionally and teaching at SAMP, along with the technical role in the TRACTION project.

What is the O Tempo (Somos Nós) project all about?

O Tempo (Somos Nós) is an opera that has resulted from co-creating work between inmates and their families, a librettist, 3 composers and a stage director. None of them are SAMP workers which is a big step forward for what we've been doing with Opera na Prisão [Opera in Prison] which is a project that started in 2003 in a major prison of Leiria city and since 2014, it has been developed in another prison, for young people also in Leiria. The piece is an interpretation of Ulysses, concentrating on the Penelope story with focus on the kind of decisions that any human can make and the outcome of them, especially the wrong decisions! On stage we have four professional opera singers performing the main roles, twenty-nine inmates in supporting roles but some of them are performing through a streaming service – the Co-Creation Stage - onto two big walls. Also there are some special small roles from a prison guard and a mother of one of the inmates. Through pre-recorded video we also had special collaboration from INO and Liceu/Top Manta.

Could you tell me more about Co-Creation Stage and how you used it during the development and performance of O Tempo (Somos Nós)?

The co-Creation Stage is a streaming tool focusing on performing on stage. It allows not only to connect secondary stages in different locations but mainly and importantly to manage a timeline of     streaming. This allows an operator to play videos, pre-recorded or live-stream performances, along with the show/performance. This is a big contribution to the options available to a stage director and artistic directors. In our case it specifically allowed us to perform a show outside the prison with all the prison inmates that wanted to participate in the project. Before the Traction project, the performances outside the prison only had some of the inmates because the majority don't have permission to go out of the prison, even for an artistic performance of a project that is counting on them!

In this show, the live video streaming was used to integrate some inmates performing from the Mozart Pavilion (a new artistic room created by SAMP inside the prison of Leiria) on stage. These inmates performed in two groups that acted like a voice of conscience for Ulysses and Penelope; sometimes commenting the decisions of the main roles, other times exposing their thoughts about the dilemmas of Ulysses and Penelope. The video projections were carefully integrated on the stage, using two big white walls as scenography. On these walls the characters performed by the inmates in the Mozart Pavilion are bigger than all the performers that are on stage in order to create a perspective that reinforces the role of a voice of the conscience.

Also, the music score was written in line with what this digital tool can do, so it was well integrated with the score and avoided some performing issues like time synchronisation between stages.

Wow, that sounds like a very high-tech and very ambitious project! What were the community participants’ reactions to using this technology?

For most of the inmates, this piece was the second time that we worked with the Co-Creation Stage. So, most of the reaction took place in a previous experimental show. In the first approach there was a positive reaction but during the rehearsals I noticed some of the participants complain because of technical issues that made everyone wait more than normal. 

But there was, in particular, one big reaction: the energy of all the inmates on the show day were stronger than before – compared to the other Opera na Prisão projects - and we believe that it was a result of having the opportunity to have the inmates that can go out of the prison to perform and those that cant on the stage at the same time!

Do you think the co-creation stage will be of benefit to similar projects in the future? 

Yes, especially regarding the way that it allows to put on stage anyone that is far away. Working with prison inmates there is a big part of the community that can't be on stage, mainly those inmates that are not allowed to go outside the prison, but also it allows the families of the inmates also perform along with them. In O Tempo (Somos Nós) we didn't have as many family members as we wanted because of difficulties created by the pandemic situation - only two mothers participated on stage - but if there were more family members then I'm sure that it would be totally possible to have them perform with live-streaming.

Thanks so much Bruno and thank you for sharing your amazing project with us!

FOLLOW THE TRACTION PROJECT 

The TRACTION members are creating a new website that will be available once the project ends (publication expected for the beginning of 2023). This website aims to target the cultural and creative industry showing what worked for us in opera co-creation and what didn’t, with the aim of being a useful tool to promote future co-creation in performing arts. All the technology enablers created in TRACTION, including the Co-Creation Stage, will be shared through a Wiki as open-source with instructions on how to use it. We hope this will be useful for other institutions and companies in their participatory art approaches.

You can find more about O Tempo (Somos Nós) here and to learn about the TRACTION project, you can visit the website www.traction-project.eu.