Award-winning Streetwise Opera comes to Teesside University

A charity which gives people who have experienced homelessness the opportunity to perform on stage will be putting on a unique show at Teesside University.

And the University has 60 tickets to give away to local charities and community groups for the performance which makes the audience part of the action.

Streetwise Opera will stage ‘The Answer to Everything’ on Saturday 1 February at 7.00pm in the Stephenson Lecture Theatre, with a special encore performance from their Middlesbrough workshop group who meet each week at Hope North East.

The charity uses music and performance to help homeless people make positive changes in their lives and has created a number of critically-acclaimed film and opera pieces.

‘The Answer to Everything’ is set at a fictional conference presented by an imaginary property developer who claims to provide the ‘answer to everything’ in the form of an indestructible brick designed to solve the housing crisis.

However, as the action unfolds and music takes over the business rhetoric, the delegates begin to question whether this radical solution is really what they’ve been looking for.

Teesside’s Stephenson Lecture Theatre will be temporarily transformed into a conference room for the event, where the audience will be given lanyards, conference packs and invited to take part in some aspects of the performance.

Streetwise Opera’s productions have won 4 and 5 star reviews in the national press and the charity has also worked with homeless communities and artists in North America, Japan and Australia.

Teesside University is offering 60 free tickets to local community groups and charities. If you are interested in free tickets for your group, please contact Fiona Fitzpatrick at northeast@streetwiseopera.org or 07598 327573.

Tickets can also be bought for £6, or £4 concessions. You can buy tickets at the Teesside University Students’ Union or online at www.streetwiseopera.org/ATEmidds.

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