SPACE OPERA - premiering 2025

Space Opera is a sci-fi/fantasy game engine for building empowered community, premiering in 2025. Participants gather over several days to collectively tell the story of how the societies they create survive, navigate, and dream amongst the stars. It brings participants together with a team of game masters and performer/facilitators in a unique combination of gameplay and theatricality.

Team:

Lead Artist: Daniel Park

Direction: Cat Ramirez

Performance/Facilitation: Joseph Ahmed, Sulu LeoNimm, KC Legacion, Sam Rise

Game Design: Ari Gass, Dain Saint, Daniel Park, John Bezark

Production Design: Harbour Edney, Evelyn Langley, Dain Saint

Hospitality And Care Coordinators: Karen Orrick, Izzy Sazak

Community Partnerships Manager: Marisol Rosa-Shapiro

Stage Manager: Nic Labadie-Bartz

Circles Administrator (2022-3): Dominique Pearson

Production Manager (2023) Rachael Rhoades
Community Partnerships Manager (2023): Rachel O'Hanlon Rodriguez

Space Opera is a 2024 awardee of the National Theater Project's Creation and Touring Grant!

Playtesters look on as Evelyn acts out what happened during the last generation. Two people are seated at a long table in the left background of this image. One has an orange face mask, the other wears a blue one and a leather jacket. Evelyn, a white woman with brown hair in a bun stands in the foreground and is wearing a black and white striped top under black overalls and a blue mask.

Dain Saint stands behind a lectern on a stage. He is wearing khaki pants that perfectly match his hat. he is wearing a facemask and very cool gold round sunglasses. Dain is playing as the sun of this solar system. There is dramatic red lighting in the background.

Two playtesters sit next to each other at a table in the center of the frame. They playfully are crouching and gesticulating with their hands as they attack another society in the game.

Dain Saint, playing the sun, is at the center of the frame and is talking to two attentive, seated playtesters. Joe Ahmed can be seen in the background of the photo and is holding their hands above their head in a pyramid shape. The foreground is illuminated with red light, and the background is blue and purple. The lighting is dramatic.

Space Opera is an experiment in democratic production management. In our “Circles Model”, artistic and producorial staff work with each other in a non-hierarchical system inspired by “holacracy,” a decentralized organizational structure that gives everyone involved in the production, including performers, a direct say in the high-level decisions of the piece, all the way up to budget allocation and hiring decisions.

A Uniquely Democratic Process

Here's what our staff think about the Circles Production Model...

"Our experiments in democracy feel really special to me in an arts space even when they're foggy and new to navigate inside of."

"Working with Obvious Agency is categorically different from working with other workplaces in this sector because they structurally empower you as a co-creator and a collaborator. While many other groups employ top-down decision making practices that leaves designers feeling only responsible for narrow corners of the artistic process, Obvious Agency's bottom up circles model empowers all members of the creative team to articulate broad and bold visions about the entire scope of the project while also respecting individual team members skills and expertise. The result is a project grand in scope with a full team of creators who are all deeply invested in the artistic outcome."

Get Involved!

Unlike a piece of theater that might undergo workshops or previews, Space Opera is an interactive game that requires frequent playtesting. Playtesters are a vital part of our process: playtesters get early access to our game and their feedback helps us create a better, more accessible game. Future playtests will be happening throughout 2024 and early 2025 - subscribe to our mailing list to learn more!

WHYY

The Philadelphia Citizen

The Inquirer

Past Workshops

September 25, 2022

Asian Arts Initiative

October 29th, 2022

University of Pennsylvania

December 15th-19th, 2022

Asian Arts Initiative

February 19th - 26th, 2023

Asian Arts Initiative

February 19th-26th, 2023

Asian Arts Initiative

July 13th - 16th, 2023

Pendle Hill

November 27th-30th, December 9th-11th

Arch Street Meeting House

May 31st - June 2nd

ExCITe Center

Lead support provided by the William Penn Foundation.

Space Opera is made possible with funding by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Theater Project, with lead funding from the Mellon Foundation and additional funding from the Doris Duke Foundation.

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