Not a tribute, but a takeover: Performers are empowered to reclaim their stories in DIVA EX MACHINA, an experimental student-led production created by the spring 2025 Opera Theater class running from Friday, April 25 to Sunday, April 27 in room C105 at CalArts.
Herb Alpert School of Music faculty Carmina Escobar serves as executive producer, artistic director, and lighting designer of the opera-theater work, featuring a program of pieces by Talulah Howard (Music BFA 28), Ronen Marlowe (Music BFA 26), Sofí Jaquez (Music MFA 26), Amit Maish (Music BFA 28), Morgan Rotenberry (Music BFA 28), and Jaz Jendersee (Music BFA 25). The aforementioned performers also collaborated closely with Escobar for set design and realization, and are further credited with scene concepts, direction, and dramaturgy.
While developing the work, the class drew upon Catherine Clément’s 1979 book Opera, or the Undoing of Women, an examination of women’s treatment in opera. Each piece during the program begins with a death aria—a solo vocal piece performed by characters before or while dying—which then “ruptures into a personal act of transformation: refusal, survival, reinvention.” More about the program from the official press release:
At its core, DIVA EX MACHINA is a ritual of reclamation—of narrative, voice, and visibility. Each performer claimed authorship not only over sound, but over image, presence, and self-representation. They designed and constructed their own costumes, crafting the visual language of their transformation. They shaped dramaturgies meant not to polish the canon, but to rupture it from within—to disarm the structures that have historically silenced and constrained the feminine. Their voices, their bodies, their choices. What emerges is not a reenactment of trauma, but a chorus of radical self-authorship and liberated narrative power.
The production boasts several other CalArtians among its credits. Music faculty Paul Berkolds is DIVA EX MACHINA’s assistant producer, as well as its music director. Berkolds is accompanied by Jayden Ostler (Music MFA 25) on piano and electric keyboard, Joe Hayes (Music MFA 26) on electronics, and Sören Lesher (Music MFA 26) on cello. Jeremiah Lamph (Music MFA 25) and Hayes also join the performance as actors.
The event is free and open to the public. Attendees are advised to arrive early as seating is limited.
