One room. Two voices. Hundreds more waiting to be discovered.

In Blank Slate, the audience is more than spectators. They become a character, a choir, and the driving force of the drama.

This one-act opera by Seán Doherty unfolds without instruments, without sheet music, and without passive observers. One figure controls an unseen world. The other dares to resist, and through your voice she finds her strength. The result is not something to watch at a distance, but something to step into: voices rising together, stories shaped in real time, and the boundary between stage and audience erased.

At the heart of Blank Slate is vocal painting, a language of gestures that shapes rhythm, harmony, and texture in the moment. It enables anyone, regardless of musical training, to co-create a living soundscape. In the opera, the protagonists use these gestures as both musical and dramatic tools, with the audience actively carrying the sound world forward.

No two performances are ever the same. Each performance of Blank Slate is made by the people in the room, a collective act of music and theatre that exists only once and then vanishes.

When you join, you do not just listen. You sing. You shape. You belong.

Previous Performances

• Osnabrück Opera House, Osnabrück, Germany, March 2025
• The Big Sing Festival, Philharmonie Haarlem, Haarlem, Netherlands, July 2025 

Synopsis

Scene 1

Med and Ren find themselves trapped in an empty room. Ren longs to know who she is and what lies beyond. Med commands the voices hidden behind the blank wall and uses them to soothe her. Slowly, Ren learns to control those voices herself.

Scene 2

Ren creates her own music. Furious, Med attacks. A battle begins—voices clash, gestures become weapons, and the audience becomes the battlefield. With their support, Ren breaks free.

Scene 3

Ren steps through the wall into the audience, realising she cannot survive outside. She chooses one among them to return with her, and the cycle begins again.