Vocal Pedagogy Workshop
May 2025 Los Angeles
Led by Shooka Afshar, a Harvard Music Award-winning opera singer, composer, and music educator, graduated from Longy School of Music of Bard College.
The Internal Family
Fall 2025 and the location is TBD
Shooka Afshar is writing a new mixed media performance, which will come to the stage in about a year.
The Internal Family explores the internal psychological struggles of women as they navigate societal expectations. While the main character is depicted as a woman, the narrative aims to underscore universal human experiences, showing that such internal battles affect individuals across all genders. Using satire, the performance brings these inner conflicts to life through actors who represent parts of the psyche, such as insecurity and fear, highlighting how these forces can hinder personal growth.
This work also thoughtfully integrates LGBTQ+ characters, addressing themes of discrimination and the courage required to reveal one’s true self. To convey these complex themes, The Internal Family incorporates Plastique Animée techniques set to Hungarian Rhapsody No. 14 by Liszt and Vivaldi’s Winter, creating a synchronized relationship between movement and music that deepens the emotional impact.
The Manipulation project
Premiered at Casa Regis Artist in Residency, Italy July 2022. New Date: 2025. Location TBD
Shooka Afshar composed The Manipulation Project, based on her life experiences, and therefore the repetition of some trends. She then became interested in the human psyche and how a human being is drawn to a manipulative situation or person, how it influences her/his life, and then how that person gets out of that situation. She believes every human being deals with it, on some level or another. But it's our choices, that creates our response to those situations.
First, Shooka wrote the skeleton of the project in April 2022. After then, she invited 7 other artists, dancers and musicians, to do an Artist in Residency in the Biella Province, near Milano, Italia, for the whole month of July 2022.
Shooka and her team, created a graphic score / improvised dramatic performance, which received great feedback from several acclaimed artist in Italy.
The Manipulation Project received positive review in a few magazines and newspapers in Biella.