Sensorium Ex is developed and presented with support from the Ford Foundation’s Creativity and Free Expression Arts and Culture (CFE A&C) program, the Mellon Foundation, the Doris Duke Foundation’s Performing Arts Technologies Lab, Jill and Bill Steinberg, National Sawdust, Achelis & Bodman Foundation, and New Music USA. The commissioning of Paola Prestini for Sensorium Ex received funding from OPERA America’s Opera Grants for Women Composers program supported by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation. Additional commissioning support was provided by the Allen R and Judy Brick Freedman Venture Fund for New Music. Additional production support was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, and Elizabeth Madigan Jost, with development support from the American Academy in Rome, Artscape Theatre Centre - Cape Town, The Shed, Performance Space New York, the REACH at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington National Opera, New York State Council on the Arts. Sensorium Ex is also presented with support from Creative Capital Foundation for Paola Prestini. The world premiere performances of Sensorium Ex in the Common Senses Festival are made possible through the generous support of the Holland Foundation. Additional commissioning support from The Atlanta Opera.

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Music by Paola Prestini

Libretto by Brenda Shaughnessy

Creative Development by Paola Prestini, Brenda Shaughnessy and Jerron Herman

Directed by Jay Scheib and Jerron Herman

Music Directed by Elizabeth Askren

Creative Producing by Beth Morrison and Ras Dia

Mem: Hailey McAvoy

Kitsune: Jakob Jordan

Cello: Jeffrey Zeigler

Composer: Paola Prestini

Libretto: Brenda Shaughnessy

Director: Jay Scheib

Creative Producers: Beth Morrison and Ras Dia

Associate Sound Designer: Zo McGlynn

Video Designer: Peter Torpey

Sensorium AI Software Designer and Project Director: Luke DuBois

VisionIntoArt Impact Lab Fellow for Sensorium AI: Daniella Omeruo

VisionIntoArt Impact Lab Fellow for Sensorium Ex: Greg Moomjy

Communication Partner to Mr. Jordan: Julie Sando

Co-commissioner and Photographer: Jill Steinberg

Live Camera Operator and Directing Assistant: Xinyu Xu

Created by composer Paola Prestini and librettist Brenda Shaughnessy and directed by Jay Scheib, the narrative of Sensorium Ex is a dystopian sci-fi tale that explores the intersection of corporate greed, artificial intelligence, and the fundamental nature of the human voice. Set in a future dominated by a global entity known as 'CORP,' the story revolves around the struggle for agency and the definition of humanity. 

The story focuses on Dr. Mem, a scientist working for CORP, and her non-verbal, non-ambulatory son, Kitsune. Mem has dedicated her life to developing technology that can 'unlock' Kitsune’s voice, believing that clear communication is the key to his dignity and agency. The opera shifts from a corporate thriller to a mystical escape. As they attempt to flee CORP's 'colossal confines,' the narrative places the ultimate power in Kitsune's hands. Kitsune must use his voice, expressed through Sensorium AI – to guide the group through an otherworldly realm. 

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The Role of AI in Sensorium Ex  

Sensorium Ex uses AI to lend 'voice' to non-verbal or minimally verbal performers. Developed by R. Luke Dubois and NYU’s Ability Lab, Sensorium AI uses 'vocal sampling' to create a natural-sounding digital voice for the lead character, Kitsune. Rather than a robotic text-to-speech output (like traditional AAC devices), the AI analyzes the performer’s own unique vocalizations to synthesize an expressive, operatic voice. Performers use LiDAR sensors—similar to those in self-driving cars—to control the AI-generated voice in real time. By moving their hands, they can manipulate the pitch, pace and emotion allowing for a truly live, improvisational performance. The Sensorium Project is a VisionIntoArt Production. 

Commissioned by VisionIntoArt in association with Beth Morrison Projects, and Common Senses Festival
Developed and Produced by VisionIntoArt and Beth Morrison Projects.

Sensorium Ex is developed and presented with support from the Ford Foundation’s Creativity and Free Expression Arts and Culture (CFE A&C) program, the Mellon Foundation, the Doris Duke Foundation’s Performing Arts Technologies Lab, Jill and Bill Steinberg, National Sawdust, Achelis & Bodman Foundation, and New Music USA.

The commissioning of Paola Prestini for Sensorium Ex received funding from OPERA America’s Opera Grants for Women Composers program supported by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation,

Additional commissioning support was provided by the Allen R and Judy Brick Freedman Venture Fund for New Music.,

Additional production support was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, and Elizabeth Madigan Jost, with development support from the American Academy in Rome, Artscape Theatre Centre - Cape Town, The Shed, Performance Space New York, the REACH at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington National Opera, New York State Council on the Arts.,

Sensorium Ex is also presented with support from Creative Capital Foundation for Paola Prestini.

The world premiere of Sensorium Ex, presented May 22–25, 2025 at the Common Senses Festival in Omaha, Nebraska, was made possible through the generous support of the Holland Foundation.

Additional commissioning support from The Atlanta Opera

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.

This is a seated performance. If you require accessibility accommodations, please email boxoffice@nationalsawdust.org.

‍ABOUT BRENDA SHAUGHNESSY, LIBRETTIST

Brenda Shaughnessy is a poet and Sensorium Ex’s librettist. Born in Okinawa, Japan and raised in Southern California, she was educated at University of California, Santa Cruz, and Columbia University. She’s the author of several books of poetry, including Tanya (2023, Knopf,) The Octopus Museum (2019, Knopf,) Our Andromeda (2012, Copper Canyon,) and Interior with Sudden Joy (1999, FSG.) Her work’s been supported by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study at Radcliffe, the N.E.A./Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, and other arts and humanities institutions. An English Professor at Rutgers University-Newark, she is always inspired by poetry’s stellar next generation: her students in the M.F.A. program, who know their voices are their power, their truth. She lives in New Jersey with her family.

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ABOUT PAOLA PRESTINI, COMPOSER

Composer Paola Prestini has cultivated a uniquely expansive and humanistic musical voice, through pieces that transcend genre and discipline, and projects whose global impact reverberates beyond the walls of the concert hall. Far more than just notes on a page, Prestini’s works give voice to those whom society has silenced, and offer a platform for the causes that are most vital to us all. Prestini has been named one of the Top 35 Female Composers in Classical Music by the Washington Post, one of the top 100 Composers in the World by National Public Radio, and one of the Top 30 Professionals of the Year by Musical America. As Co-Founder of National Sawdust, she has collaborated with luminaries like poet Robin Coste Lewis, visual artists Julie Mehretu and Nick Cave, and musical legends David Byrne, Philip Glass and Renée Fleming, and her works have been performed throughout the world with leading institutions like the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera, Dallas Opera, London’s Barbican Center, Mexico’s Bellas Artes, and many more.

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ABOUT JAY SCHEIB, DIRECTOR

Jay Scheib is an interdisciplinary director, developer, and designer of plays, operas, musicals and other hybrid live performance immersions. A Professor, scheib heads the Music and Theater Arts programs at MIT. Scheib’s stagings and interventions have been lauded throughout Europe and the United States. Current projects include Richard Wagner’s “Parsifal,” with the Bayreuther Festspiele, a UK tour of Jim Steinman’s “Bat Out of Hell,” and a season of rapid prototype plays at MIT under the banner #socialclimatechange. Scheib holds an MFA from Columbia University.

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ABOUT HALEY MCAVOY, ROLE OF MEM

Recognized as a “gorgeous-voiced mezzo-soprano,” (Broadway World), Hailey McAvoy is a versatile performer of opera, song, and concert. McAvoy’s recent operatic performances include appearing as Mem in Paola Prestini’s Sensorium Ex and as Julia Child in Lee Hoiby’ Bon Appetit with Opera Praktikos. Additional roles in her repertoire include Third Lady (The Magic Flute; MassOpera), Third Woodsprite (Dvorak, Rusalka; Opera Ithaca), the Page of Herodias (Strauss, Salome; Fisher Center of Performing Arts), The Taller Daughter (Mazzoli, Proving Up; Aspen Music Festival), Zosha (Heggie, Out of Darkness; Eastman Opera Theater), Cherubino (Le Nozze di Figaro; Aquilon Music Festival), and in select performances as a Young Artist with Cedar Rapids Opera and Opera Ithaca. Equally active as a concert performer, McAvoy has recently made her Greene Space recital debut in a concert broadcast to WQXR with pianist Alison d’Amato. She has also appeared as guest soloist in Ravel’s Shéhérazade with the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra and as a soloist at Opera Ithaca in performance of Molly Joyce’s YouSaidHeSaidSheSaid. In 2024, McAvoy was an artist in residence at Hogfish Regenerative Arts Portland, Maine, where, in addition to singing the role of Newspaper Vendor in Poulenc’s Breasts of Tiresias, she began developing a concert of original music which explores themes of disability, accessibility, and what it means to feel at home in one’s body. As a performer with the neurological condition Cerebral Palsy, McAvoy is committed to amplifying the discussion around disability in the arts in order to make the performing arts more inclusive for all. She recently published essays on accessibility in the arts in AGMAzine and Our Singing Bodies and she has appeared as a panelist on accessibility forums with such organizations as Opera Ithaca and Opera NexGen. To learn more about McAvoy’s singing and Cerebral Palsy, visit www.HaileyMcAvoy.com

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ABOUT JAKOB JORDAN, ROLE OF KITSUNE

Jakob Jordan is a 23 year old autistic man from Ohio. He is apraxic so his body does not respond to the commands in his brain. With the help of a trained communication partner he learned how to communicate his inner thoughts through spelling words one letter at a time, on a wireless keyboard and ipad in August 2023. It opened up his life in the most expansive ways. He is an artist who runs his own business called Cards By Jakob. He is passionate about his new acting career. Jakob is thrilled and honored to be a part of the sensorium Ex community. He relates deeply to his role of Kitsune as they share the struggles of being trapped in an unreliable body. Jakob is so excited to bring him to life. Being a part of Sensorium Ex’s inclusive mission has sparked a fire in his heart to dream beyond barriers. His next big dream is to educate parents, professionals, and students with his best friend Andrew about apraxia and believing autistic people are capable of anything. He lives in an agriculture community with his mom, 9 cats, 2 dogs, and a lot of fur. He enjoys watching sports at his dads, performing in hip hop dance competitions, baking cookies with his grandma, and going to as many New Kids On The Block concerts as possible. You can find him on his Cards By Jakob facebook page.

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ABOUT NATIONAL SAWDUST ENSEMBLE

National Sawdust Ensemble (NSE), led by cellist Jeffrey Zeigler, is the in-house band of National Sawdust. Made up of highly acclaimed artists who are or have been members of the Kronos Quartet, Da Capo Chamber Players, New York New Music Ensemble, the Internationally Contemporary Ensemble, Imani Winds, Flutronix, this instrumentally flexible group is an integral part of National Sawdust Mentorship Initiatives, playing, teaching and collaborating with emerging and professional composers from the Blueprint Bridge Fellowship with The Juilliard School, as well as the internationally renowned Hildegard Commission Concert for composers who are women and other marginalized genders. The mission of the ensemble is to give composers and artists access to the high caliber of musicianship that is native to National Sawdust. The NSE has also supported projects such as Liederabend, Senses with Beth Morrison Projects; the Hildegard Sonic Installation at the Rockefeller Center; and the Cavafy Festival: ‘Archive of Desire’, with the Onassis Foundation.