PROJECT PROPOSAL The unique approach of this opera (opera brut) has been developed for several years and will be realized in a full staged opera. It combines sound, music, light, still and moving images projected upon large paper installations on stage, which interact with the singers, orchestra and actors. The paper becomes a landscape for movement, and the dramatic quality of the light and shadows on this paperscape evoke an unearthly drama of human struggle, dignity and survival. It depicts the plight of refugees through war and chaos, through sung cries, prayers, curses, shrieks, pleas interwoven with spoken text combined with electronic sounds of destruction and slaughter. The drama rises and falls; abrasive sounds of machines are balanced with whispers, chants, and celestial sounds. The story is transmitted through a young woman's plight: her memories, her mourning, her hopes, her determination to survive. She represents an archetype of victims of ethnic violence, war, social devastation. The compelling and dramatic intensity of this opera, combined with its unusual use of space, sound and movement interacts with the paperscape. Singers and the instrumentists move through and around the paper with its projected images, and at times even deconstruct the imagery, jumping through it.