Annie O'Dowd - Left Shoe Opera Project

On the completion of "Linkschuh und die Meermurmel" ("Left Shoe and the Foundling") , Timothy Florence and I became interested in developing the work further and reimagining the story, as a children's opera. The opportunity to undertake doctoral studies in the creative arts, and to develop the idea as a research project was the springboard I needed to embark on this ambitious project. The research study, "Adaptation in Collaboration" (working title) is being undertaken with UniSQ as part of their DCAR programme. Essentially the project will explore storytelling in different genres, and how the narrative of my original story responds to the addition of other elements such as music, staging and live performance as it is adapted into a new form, aiming to answer these questions:

1.How does the practice of collaboration with a music practitioner change the creative translation process of writing a libretto from my existing story?

2. How does the practice of adaptation evolve and transform the original narrative, especially when considering the aesthetic strategies such as design, staging and puppetry?

3. How might insights gained around collaboration and adaptation assist in creating a model of practice for other children's opera/musical practitioners?

A visual guide to the characters in "Left Shoe and the Foundling"

Collaboration is key to the project, as Tim and I meet over Teams and discuss the story and music, creating important interview data for the study. In addition to other interview data, I will be creating and collating artworks, journals, sketches and storyboards to chart progress, gain understanding and formulate knowledge. The visual aspects have always been an important part of my method, and here I have included the initial sketches and storyboards to show the development of the ideas, characters, music and puppets inform the writing process.

A breakdown of the story into important facts and how they might be expressed in either action, dialogue, recitative or song.

One of the first things I did to study the elements of the story was to breakdown each part of the narrative and decide which aspects (usually extra details about the seadog world) could be relinquished from the text. Simplicity of narrative is key as music moves more slowly than words.The reduction of the text allows space for the music (Weisstiein 1961).

The first storyboard sketches. I was trying to show graph of the emotional journey of Left Shoe

In addition, I sketched out some ideas for slight changes to show the action in a new way.

Tim and I have already had many discussions about possibilities for the music and staging.

This is a second attempt at graphing the emotions and main beats of the story. I tried to simplify this, only including what was important for the story to make sense.

Although this looks like the merest bare bones, it really helped me to visualise the narrative as a whole.

I also had the idea that if I could share this visual tool with Tim, he would be able to see more easily where the climaxes occur and how to chart the emotional subtext accordingly. Our meetings are remote as Tim lives in Berlin, so there are quite a few communication issues. Anything that can support our mutual understanding of what we are creating together is important. Together we are working to create a 'landscape of practice' (Etienne & Beverly Wenger-Trayner 2014), employing our complementary disciplines for a common goal. Once I started to see this as a helpful tool for us both, I kept going. The next sketches were my first go at sorting these story elements into scenes.

Drawing pencil roughs of the scenes added another layer of visual comprehension which would become the beginnings of my thoughts around staging.

The process of sketching and refining these roughs also gave me insight into the necessary parts of the story that occur in the original text as reported action. Musical theatre tends to have a "predominance of the present" where the drama is realised in "melodic expression" happening onstage as the story unfolds. Action that happens offstage or is part of the backstory is kept to a minimum. (Dahlhaus 1989)

When I completed this set of sketches, I decided to take it further and make a larger storyboard where I would have the room to add ideas around music, including specific opera elements puppets, and staging. I also wanted to flesh out what will occur onstage in each scene, while showing the rising and falling emotional intensity, climax and resolution.