How do you express the voicelessness of children in detention? An opera without words

Cat Hope’s Speechless starts with a Human Rights Commission report and turns it into something far more evocative

It was 2014. Gillian Triggs’ report for the Australian Human Rights Commission on children in immigration detention had just been released and Cat Hope, a Perth-based composer, was beginning to despair that Australia’s policy on children in detention would never change. She watched as the report seemed to slide into a black hole, and Triggs was personally attacked by the rightwing media and conservative government.

“I was pretty horrified how the report was received in parliament,” Hope tells Guardian Australia. “But it wasn’t just about how the report was received, it was also how Triggs herself was received. All the expertise that led to this point was just dismissed.”

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2H7bi2Q
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