Sensorium Ex is a groundbreaking new opera by Paola Prestini that explores the intersection of AI, disability, and the arts, redefining what it means to have a voice. Premiering at the Common Senses Festival in Omaha in May 2025, the work features a predominantly disabled cast, including a nonverbal, non-ambulatory lead, and integrates cutting-edge AI tools developed in collaboration with NYU’s Ability Lab to enhance creative expression for nonverbal individuals. With a libretto by Brenda Shaughnessy and direction by Jerron Herman & Jay Scheib, Sensorium Ex is more than a performance—it’s a revolution in accessibility and artistic innovation, offering a blueprint for the future of inclusive storytelling in opera. I got to sit down with Paola Prestini, the composer, and Ju Hyeon Han, the blind soprano premiering the role of Sophia to learn a bit more about this ground-breaking production.
The Creation of Sensorium Ex
What inspired you to create Sensorium Ex?
Prestini: The piece began with a commission, with an opera company that subsequently didn’t work out, but when the opera company came to me, it had a disability theme, and I was like, well, I can’t really participate in this unless I work with someone who has lived experience with disability. I knew that Brenda did. She has this incredible book called Our Andromeda, where she describes her life and childbirth, and so I thought she would be the perfect person. We have worked on several other works together.
Hence Sensorium Ex began really with Brenda Shaughnessy’s words, which is this incredible exploration of motherhood, love, and agency that really emerges from this relationship of a mother and her disabled kid, and how they’re able to manifest and escape from a dystopian world. When we began to talk about the potential for this piece, she clearly had lived experience with the topic, so we began to think about what does a piece like this need in terms of casting? And because I’m somebody who loves to create systems and worlds for things to exist in, it felt like I could embrace the topic and do justice to her words and the meaning behind them.
How does Sensorium AI come into the opera?
Paola: We’ve been working on Sensorium Ex for about seven years, and the AI portion began about five years ago. It was because of two characters that this was born. One was the character of Sophia, who’s an aggregation of the characters on stage. And so, the question of how to create that aggregation was something that I was interested in. Then two was the question of, well, if we have a nonverbal actor on stage playing Kune, how are we going to communicate in different ways? That became a question about augmented communication devices, and how we might be able to potentially open up expressivity on that front. I reached out to my friend Luke Dubois at NYU, who works with the NYU Ability Project, and we began to devise, if you will, this two-prong approach to both the character Sophia and Kune, who’s the nonverbal son in the work.
There are many people in the artistic community that fear AI could diminish human creativity in the arts. What are your thoughts on this and how would you address those concerns and reassure artists about the role of AI in artistic expression?
Paola: I mean, I think it’s another tool. We’re far away from the singularity. I think that in this specific case, this is an example of tech being used for extraordinarily wonderful reasons to be able to augment communication and expressivity. I think it’s a good example of how we work with tech to enhance humanity. You know what I mean? And I think that’s really exciting. I obviously know that there’s ways in which tech can be not great and can be very scary, but I think in this case, like one of our advisory board members, Gregg Mozgala, said, “What if we, instead of calling it artificial intelligence, we called it augmented intelligence.”
Ju Hyeon Han’s Perspective: Playing Sophia,the AI Character
Ju Hyeon, how did you get involved with Sensorium Ex?
Han: I got involved because a friend happened to let me know about it. She’d seen it on YapTracker about two years ago and said, “Hey, the Vision into Art is putting on this opera and they are looking for blind singer, but they are looking for a lower voice singer.” I just auditioned because I was curious about the opera and also because for the first time, probably in the history of any audition, the audition material was available in braille.
What is it like to play Sophia, a robot?
Han: What I love about Sophia is that she isn’t just a machine—she has a curiosity, a quirkiness, and an emotional depth that makes her very endearing. She asks questions, she’s inquisitive, and ultimately, she speaks to the core themes of the opera. At the end of the piece, she delivers a powerful line: It’s not the end. It can’t be the end because there is no end. That, to me, encapsulates the heart of Sensorium Ex—the ongoing nature of humanity and our collective experience.
What has been your favorite part of working on this opera?
Han: I love how Paola writes for the voice. The role fits my voice beautifully, and I feel like she really highlighted the best qualities in my singing. But beyond that, the most meaningful part of this production has been the sensitivity to accessibility. Beth Morrison Projects and Vision Into Art have prioritized making sure all my access needs are met. From providing a braille score to working out logistics like transportation in an unfamiliar city, they have taken care of everything so I can focus on performing.
Challenges and Innovations in Accessibility
Ju Hyeon, do most companies provide braille scores for blind singers?
Han: No, not at all. It’s usually up to the singer to advocate for it, and even then, funding is often a problem. Transcribing a full score into braille can be incredibly expensive—sometimes up to thousands of dollars. Plus, it takes time. Most productions move so fast that there isn’t enough time to get the materials properly transcribed. The fact that Sensorium Ex had audition materials in braille was groundbreaking.
How do you prepare for a role as a blind singer?
Han: One of the biggest challenges is not having access to a conductor’s visual cues. You can sense the presence of a conductor, but you miss out on things like beat divisions and breath cues. So I have to prepare meticulously—I not only memorize my part but also everyone else’s so I know exactly where I am in the score at all times. The Sensorium Ex team provided me with a MIDI track of the full score with vocal parts included, which has been an invaluable tool in my preparation.
Could you provide more details about the Sensorium Codex, including its origins, who developed it, and how companies can gain access to it?
Prestini: The Codex is essentially going to be an open source document with films, questions, interviews, and processes that we’ve been building over the last seven years. It’s going to be edited by Jennifer Pyron, who’s a wonderful writer and then informed by our sensorium fellows, of which one is Gregory Moomjy, he has his own opera company called Opera Praktikos. He has Cerebral Palsy, and basically, we’re going to form, I hope, a digestible series of articles, how-tos on everything from how we built the world of Sensorium, how we built the advisory board, the casting plans, the casting calls, basically create these blueprints for people to be able to look at them, that will be open to anybody who wants to do this.
I have, for example, in my score, a composer inclusion directive. You imagine Porgy and Bess, there’s a casting requirement. There’s the same thing in this piece. It’s a series of principles for equity, inclusion, and representation that needs to be in the casting and in the crew. It basically walks you through the type of community engagement requirements, such as developing local talent, partnership with local disability organizations, potential training and documentation and knowledge of the Codex, so people can actually have all of that available to them when they’re planning.
Part of the reason to do this was that I’ve been working on this for seven years, not because it took me seven years to write the piece, but because nobody wanted to present it. My idea behind it was well, okay, maybe it’s because nobody liked it, but I don’t think so. Nobody heard it. I think it’s really just the fear of doing something that hasn’t been done. So the question becomes how do we prepare people with all the tools possible that we didn’t have?
The Codex is in process of being made right now. We’ll do our very first talk about it at the Common Sense Festival where the piece is premiering. But I think in its totality, it’ll be available starting in the fall.
The Future of Sensorium Ex
Paola, what’s next for Sensorium Ex?
Prestini: The opera will premiere at the Common Sense Festival in May 2025, and after that, we’re planning performances at the Artscape Festival in South Africa in November 2027. We also hope to bring it to New York City. It’s been a long journey, and I’m grateful for the incredible collaborators I’ve had along the way. This is just the beginning, and I’m excited to see how the piece evolves in the future.
Final Thoughts
Sensorium Ex is a powerful exploration of disability, communication, and technology in the opera world. Paola’s innovative approach is reshaping the boundaries of art and accessibility, creating a space where both human expression and technological advancements come together to tell a story that resonates with a global audience. As the opera continues its journey toward the stage, it’s clear that it will serve as a model for future productions, challenging the status quo and paving the way for a more inclusive and equitable artistic landscape.
