A Life of One’s Own began as a question, not a script: what would it mean to stage the inheritance a woman never asked for?
The starting point was Vicky Nizri’s novel, from which I adapted text directly for the stage — choosing fragments not for plot, but for the silences inside them. Alongside that, I researched the Sephardic song repertoire in Ladino: the language my protagonist would have carried from the Balkans to Mexico, not as background music, but as the one place where she is allowed to speak freely.
Working with countertenor and oud player Emmanuel Pool, we built arrangements that let the lute hold the weight of distance and migration, while stage director Norma Suárez shaped the space around three chairs and a single music stand — minimal means, so nothing stands between the audience and the voice.
What started as a staged reading in 2022 became, over three years, an opera that has now toured to London twice.
