ZUAM is an immersive, site-specific opera-ritual for three opera singers, a Deaf dancer, electronics, and video. Set in a world suspended between deep prehistory and an imagined distant future, the work conjures an ancient-futurist tribe navigating the timeless space between origin and destiny. Over the course of two hours, ZUAM explores UrSprache - a primal, proto-language once sought by Futurist poets, Antonin Artaud, and Peter Brook - in dialogue with the expressive power of sign language and nonverbal gesture.

At its core, ZUAM is a search for reconnection, a meditative rite for the fragmented self in an age of relentless acceleration. It offers a space for stillness and introspection, inviting the audience into a metaphysical journey that bypasses linear narrative and speaks instead to the subconscious. It is both a ritual and a refuge, an attempt to return to something elemental and unspoken.

Technology is central to the spatial and sensorial experience. The audience, free to move through the open environment, is encircled by glowing columns of light. At its heart stand two towering monoliths: one composed of loudspeakers, the other a totem of LED screens that pulse with tribal patterns, abstract rhythms, and noise. A vast controlled cloud drifts across the space, becoming a living screen upon which the faces of ancestral spirits emerge and vanish.

Credits

Phase 1
Artistic direction – Jerzy Bielski, Tatiana Rosa and Thomas Brand

Phase 2
Artistic direction – Jerzy Bielski and Thomas Brand
Concept, composition, stage direction – Jerzy Bielski
Dramaturgy, visuals, light design – Thomas Brand
Dramaturgy, choreography – Sandra Abouav
Audio programming, live electronics – Tatiana Rosa
Performers – Pawel Moleda, Laura Bohn, Julia Mintzer, Arnout Lems, Kelvin Chan, Marieke van den Berg
Coaching - Frances Sanders
Final Direction - Stephen Liebman
Set Construction - Scipio Akova