No One is Forgotten

No One Is Forgotten: A Radio Opera in Development Paola Prestini and Sxip Shirey, Co-composers Winter Miller, Librettist with additional lyrics by Sxip Shirey

What if you lost your freedom in an instant?

This is the story of Lali and Beng, an aid worker and journalist being held captive. No one knows where they’ve been taken, or if they are alive. Or, maybe their story is being broadcast to the world?

Inspired by the plight of captured journalists and aid workers, No One is Forgotten promotes the message of strength and hope by leaning on our humanity. The story is moving, surprisingly funny, and now even more relevant to us all.

Compelled by the increasing risk journalists faced in their work, playwright and former journalist Winter Miller wrote No One Is Forgotten, a two-woman play which premiered in 2019 at The Rattlestick Theater in NYC, to critical acclaim.

Now, Winter Miller, Paola Prestini, and Sxip Shirey are adapting Winter’s original play, No One Is Forgotten, into an operatic hybrid designed as an exclusive audio experience using foley, cello, electronics, operatic voice, and actors to create a world of sound where the audience can enter, screen free, into Lali and Beng’s cell.

In the future, the final work will be realized in three iterations; the pure sound experience, an A/V filmed interpretation, and eventually a live staged performance.

This February, the presentation will include a presentation of operatic material, as well as exclusive behind-the-scenes footage and supporting content surrounding hostage advocacy and support for journalists’ freedoms. We continue to raise awareness of the need for protections for freedom of speech and hostage advocacy.

Co-directed by Kevin Newbury and Elliott Forrest Music direction and conducted by Raquel Acevedo Klein

Featuring: Kathleen Chalfant, Amelia Workman, Andrea Jones-Sojola and Eve Gigliotti Cellist, Jeffrey Zeigler Foley Arts, Sxip Shirey

Commissioned by Eve Gigliotti Co-produced by Cath Brittan and Eve Gigliotti

Hear it for the first time at HERE