What new worlds emerge when a classic is reimagined through accessibility from the very beginning? Opera Praktikos transforms Bellini's La Sonnambula (The Sleepwalker) into a richly integrated experience where spoken, sung, and signed languages become one expressive whole. Familiar and startlingly new, this reimagining reveals how inclusion doesn't simply expand a story - it transforms its meaning.
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ABOUT MAKEMAKE
makemake debuts this year as National Sawdust’s annual festival inviting artists to imagine futures - making, remixing, rethinking.
Named after the dwarf planet that reshaped how we define a world, and the Rapa Nui creator deity of fertility - makemake is about generating new forms: of art, of access, of community.
This is a festival that celebrates imagination, and the radical invitation to ratify accessibility by design, not as an afterthought. This is a festival that centers the belief that care is crucial, and that equity is essential. This is a festival for everyone, but especially for those who want to shape what comes next.
Expect immersive performances, evolving technologies, ecstatic raves, late night conversations, and unexpected collisions between artists, technologists, activists, and communities. Rooted in disability-led design and imagination, this is a space where access is a creative engine reshaping how we gather, sense, and move together. Through a lens of tech optimism, we explore how emerging tools can expand agency, deepen connection, and unlock new forms of expression. Expect spaces designed for care, curiosity, and connection. Expect to move, to question, to co-create.
ABOUT OPERA PRAKTIKOS
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Opera Praktikos (OPrak) formed in 2022, is a disability-affirmative company presenting a genre of opera that is interabled and champions disability-artistry as a creative force in the field. Through deliberate reinterpretations of classical operas and the commissioning of new works, OPrak's performers, arts-workers and audiences find themselves in the stories we portray on our stage through authentic representation of disability culture, the building of community and the making of great opera in NYC. OPrak.org
ABOUT SPICER CARR
Spicer Carr (He/Him) is a New York City based Composer-Lyricist and Conductor, specializing in Opera and Musical Theater. As a composer, his music has been described as “energetic and packed with full-bodied harmonies… [with tunes] playing on repeat in my head!” (Oberon's Grove, Lili Tobias). As a lyricist, his work “surprises with its ingenuity” (Orlando Sentinel, Matthew J. Palm). Spicer’s popular Christmas opera Four Lost Santas has played to sold out audiences around the globe in multiple productions since its world premiere in 2024 at Opera Orlando. Current projects include conducting/arranging Bellini’s La Sonnambula with Opera Praktikos; and composing Too Bright to See, a musical based on the award winning novel by Kyle Lukoff. Other additions in Spicer’s vocal catalogue include song cycles (U Up?), musicals (Chance the Snapper, The Rocking Boy), and operas (Fluffernutter, Sabbath). His instrumental work includes pieces for piano (Of no Concern, Nocturnes for an Insomniac), big band (Lunch Rush), and a violin concerto (Daydreams). Spicer has also written several children’s plays (Who Turned out the Lights?!, Pieces of Eight). Spicer’s work has been commissioned, developed, supported, and performed by Opera Las Vegas, Dublin Conservatoire, Light Opera Theatre of Sacramento, Opera Praktikos, Opera America, Opera Orlando, Cincinnati Song Initiative, The National Association of Teachers of Singing, Quintessence Theatre Group, Really Spicy Opera, The TYE Center, MusiCoLab, Temple University Theater, Temple Opera Theatre, and The Purple Crayon Players. Spicer is a graduate of Temple University, where he participated in the inaugural MFA cohort for Musical Theatre Collaboration.
Spicer is a proud member of the Dramatist Guild and ASCAP.
ABOUT BRANDON KAZEN-MADDOX
Brandon is an ASL Artist, actor, choreographer, director, acrobat, educator and public speaker. Brandon is a Grandchild of Deaf Adults (GODA) and a third-generation native signer of American Sign Language (ASL). Brandon is a co-founder of Up Until Now Collective: A radically-inclusive multimedia production company committed to building new structures for artistic creation. Recipient: New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) Grant and a 2022 Creative Capital Award for the ASL dance theatre reimagining of Joseph Moncure March’s 1928 jazz age narrative poem, The Wild Party, and a 2023 Mertz-Gilmore Foundation Grant for (FREEDOM), a performance piece based on their life story that combines ASL, dance and aerial arts. Other honors: Gucci's 2022 Chime-for-Change: Visions for a Feminist Future, Partners Global 2023 Art for Marginalized Communities Inclusivity Award and the Miranda Family Foundation’s RISE Theater Directory (Circle of Advocates). Brandon was a 2025 Artist in Residence for WNET/ALL ARTS and their episode “SOUL(SIGNS): Making Music Visible" premiered in April 2025. Brandon also just delivered their first TEDx Talk, “Channeling the Spirit of the Music in ASL.” Brandon recently appeared at The Flea in Jennifer Kidwell’s “we come to collect: a flirtation with capitalism”, which will be touring both locally and internationally in 2026 and beyond.
Instagram: @bkazenmaddox and @upuntilnowcollective
Facebook: Brandon Kazen-Maddox
Email: bkm296@nyu.edu