Twenty-fourth International Conference on Knowledge, Culture, and Change in Organizations

Abstract

Enheduanna Rising is the third full-length transdisciplinary opera in the Iphigenia Project, a series of transdisciplinary operas about displaced people due to climate change, economic injustice, and global conflict. Iphigenia Point Blank, the first work in the series premieres in New York City in December 2023, (and was presented at the 19th Conference for Diversity) and Ruinous Gods, the second work, co-commissioned by Spoleto Festival USA, Wuppertal Opera and Nederlans Reisopera, premieres at Spoleto Festival USA in May 2023. Enheduanna is not only the first female author in the world, but the first author, a poet who “gives birth to text.” Her poems incite the love of a goddess and a mother of a new world. This opera brings Enheduanna’s life to the stage and her poems to life as she is portrayed on a journey with a teenaged mother and child, survivors of the Turkish earthquake. Enheduanna Rising explores both underground movements and forms of transcendence while it celebrates the resistance to the old-world order and the birth of a new civilization: one of collective love and compassion. While this is not the stuff of ordinary opera, this is not an ordinary time. Enheduanna Rising is an opera for a new world. In this immersive and interactive Workshop we will present excerpts from this new work and discuss ways of using art to confront, converse about, and heal from climate crisis and injustice.