Biography
Jim Osman is a researcher and stage director from the UK. He recently graduated with a first-class BA hons degree in Drama: Comedy and Satire from Goldsmiths University. Jim received the ‘Associate Black Artists Award’ from the university’s Theatre and Performance Department and is now back for a year, hosting academic talks, running workshops and mentoring. As part of the award, Jim is currently developing a Cyberpunk opera at a science and technology themed gallery in London, Gossamer Fog. Jim’s work incorporates text-to-speech, AI and video game animation.

His dissertation thesis was titled ‘I Must Have Change or I Will Die: Negotiating National Identity in American Opera’ and he is an opera correspondent for The Morning Star newspaper, the UK’s only daily-printed socialist newspaper. In November Jim is speaking at Stage the Future 2020: Science Fiction Theatre Conference as part of Talos 2020 Festival at the Cockpit and his topic is ‘Cyberpunk and Performativity’ which uses the notion of ‘performativity’ in sociology as a theoretical framework for analysing virtual reality, video gaming and social media.

Neo-Opera, 21st Century Post-Veristic Opera as Cyberpunk Provocation