Sinéad O'Neill



On the Axis of this World
Produced by Cambridge City Opera for Tête-à-tête: The Opera Festival 2014 and Cambridge Science Festival 2016
On the Axis of this World imagines the echoes and fragments that might comprise the dreams of the Antarctic continent. It is a meditation on time, landscape, and scientific exploration. The similarities of the artist and the scientist are thematised, as the audience imagines a human being, dwarfed by the enormity of time and existence, looking at the world and saying quietly ‘I am here, and this is what I see.’
Directed by Sinéad O'Neill
Composed by Matt Rogers
Verbatim text compiled by Sinéad O'Neill
from the British Antarctic Expedition of 1911-13,
courtesy of the Scott Polar Research Institute
Design by Flora Robertson
Photography by Claire Shovelton