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"Hyper-Opera" Programs the Drama of Performance Online

You've never experienced 'The Odyssey' quite like this.
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Hyper-Opera is a website created to push our concepts of theatrical performance, interpreting the idea of interactive theater into the digital realms. By landing on the website, the viewer/participant is welcomed into the story of The Odyssey as told through the female perspectives of Aphrodite, Penelope, Eris, and Calypso.

This non-linear opera allows performance to happen through a click of a mouse and through a web exploration of the Greek classic. The project is rich in layers, meanings, and attempts to recalibrate our perspectives of what opera is and the storylines it chooses to tell. The performance looks to combine the present with the past, the tradtional with the contemporary through modes of hyper text and our culutral proclivities for all things online. Hyper-Opera was masterminded by Kakia Konstantinaki, a graphic designer by trade and graduate design student at Central Saint Martins in London. Hyper-Opera is her thesis exploring the notion of performance.

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Traditionally, a hyperopera takes place outside of a conventional opera house, allowing audience members to walk throughout the space during the performance, dictating how a storyline unfolds. In Konstantinaki’s Hyper-Opera, she seeks to play with that idea of interaction by staging an opera online, using real-time video and Soundcloud operettas, and employing the concept of a theatrical treasure hunt in the digital realm by following the essence of female mythical creatures through GIPHY, eBay, livetyping.com, and more.

Throughout the journey, Hyper-Opera maintains a drama and beauty integral to the culture of opera. The songs composed by Nalyssa Green are written and performed by a slew of female contributors. You actually feel a gale force of female energy behind every nook and clickable area in the space. From the nymph Calypso’s seductive ways, to the goddess Eris’ loathing, the digital flight of these complex characters through Hyper-Opera is emotive, crystalline and accessible.

Experience Kakia Konstantinaki's Hyper-Opera here.

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