Weather the Storm is a 45 minute opera collaboration between arts-in-health charity Rosetta Life and the Garsington Opera Learning and Participation Team.

Weather the Storm is a new work by Orlando Gough with libretto by Lucinda Jarrett and Chris Rawlence drawn from the experiences of stroke survivors. The opera was performed by a company of professional singers, stroke survivors, Garsington Opera Adult Company members and NHS Health Professionals under the direction of Karen Gillingham on 30th July 2021.

Weather the Storm is a development of the short online opera I Look for the Think, which was first streamed in September 2020, and was itself a development of Hospital Passion Play, performed at the Victoria and Albert Museum in September 2017.

The screening of the performance will be followed by a Q&A with the stroke ambassadors who took part, hosted by Rosetta Life's Artistic Director, Lucinda Jarrett.

Image below: Cover Artwork by Reading Stroke Ambassador Sonia Dudnath.

Synopsis

Weather the Storm tells the interwoven stories of three stroke survivors and their carers.

One time multi-linguist Jawad, shot five times at close range in Iraq, escaped with his life to England, where a stroke left him without speech and unable to stand.

Fernando was the flower king of Madeira, owning many of the island's garden centres. Then he fell in love with Edilane, 20 years his junior, and she fell in love with him. They moved to England where Fernando suffered a devastating stroke.

Primary school teacher Fiona whose passion for her work was cut short by her stroke, leaving her bereft of the thrill of Forest school with its squelching boots, yelping and burnt marshmallows on sticks, sparks in the fire.

The stories focus on the exhausting marathon of discovering a post-stroke identity; the gains and the setbacks; the effort of will required to regain speech and movement. And the vital role of the carer.

Brain Odysseys

The production is the culmination of a ten-year project by arts-in-health charity Rosetta Life.

Rosetta life initiated Brain Odysseys on the wards of the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in 2011. The programme spread across London and is now established in London, Bristol, Reading and High Wycombe. We have developed a performance arts pathway for people living with brain injury, working across hospital wards, community hospitals and in the community where performances are made and toured to raise awareness of stroke and brain injury and challenge the stigma people face.

Weather the Storm began in 2017 as a partnership between Rosetta Life and Garsington Opera's Learning and Participation team with a 30-minute performance at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

In 2018, together we developed partnerships across Buckinghamshire Healthcare and Royal Berkshire NHS Trusts and created Hospital Ward Songs in December 2019 to tell the story of neuro rehabilitation in hospital.

In 2020 we worked together to create a 12-minute segment of the opera, entitled I Look for the Think, to tell the carer's story. This short online opera was made with 60 stroke survivors at the height of the pandemic, before being presented as a 'Zoom Opera' in October 2020.

The Libretto for the 45-minute opera, Weather the Storm, brings all these separate performances together. It adds to these earlier performances a final piece of the story, the uncertainty and anxiety of being discharged from hospital after a stroke for both the patient and the new carer.

To read more about arts charity Rosetta Life visit www.rosettalife.org

To read more about Brain odysseys, the performance arts programme to spark recovery after brain injury & stroke visit www.strokeodysseys.org

To read more about Garsington opera's Learning and Participation team visit www.garsingtonopera.org

Connect with us: info@rosettalife.org