Artistic Performance And Creation Lab

Art. dir. Heather Tan

APAC Lab – Artistic Performance And Creation Lab is the mobile experimentation platform of Opera Asia Pacific, created to explore how opera can evolve across cultures, disciplines, and artistic languages.

As a flexible and mobile lab, APAC Lab moves between institutions, festivals, communities, rehearsal spaces, and creative environments, seeking cooperation partners who are open to artistic research, experimentation, and exchange. It brings together singers, musicians, composers, directors, writers, dancers, designers, technologists, educators, and cultural practitioners to investigate what opera can become when it is placed in dialogue with different forms and traditions.

APAC Lab looks at opera not as a fixed genre, but as a living structure that can be opened, questioned, dissected, and reimagined. Through cross-genre and cross-cultural experimentation, the Lab explores the relationship between voice, music, theatre, language, movement, text, technology, visual culture, costume, ritual, and space. It examines the many subgenres and elements within opera itself, while also allowing them to meet other performance practices from across Asia, the Pacific, and beyond.

At its heart, APAC Lab is a space for artistic risk and discovery. It aims to stretch the boundaries of opera, create new working methods, and develop fresh formats that speak to contemporary audiences. By encouraging collaboration across disciplines and cultures, APAC Lab supports new ways of making, sharing, and experiencing opera – keeping the art form alive, open, and responsive to the future.