“Pass the Popcorn” teams up with Film Streams during the Common Senses Festival to explore inclusive and sensory-aware cinema across Omaha.
By Gabriel Escalera
Pass the Popcorn: Film Streams and Common Senses Festival Explore Inclusion with “Sensorium Ex”
May 8th, 2025
Film Streams and the Common Senses Festival have partnered this year to present a series of films exploring sensory experience, inclusion, and accessibility in the arts. The festival runs citywide through May 25.
The first screening in the collaboration is The Making of Sensorium Ex, a documentary chronicling the development of the groundbreaking opera Sensorium Ex. Co-created by librettist Brenda Shaughnessy and composer Paola Prestini, the opera blends artificial intelligence, disability, and music in a dystopian narrative about a mother and her nonverbal, disabled son resisting a corporation’s efforts to redefine humanity.
The documentary offers a behind-the-scenes look at the opera’s creation and the creative team’s efforts to push the boundaries of what opera can be. At one point in the film, a co-director remarks, “Everything is experimental. Because it’s never been done… That frame of it allows me to keep asking questions, staying curious, and staying investigative.”
The opera, which aims to make space for artists and audiences of all abilities, premieres May 22–25 at the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Sapp Fieldhouse.
The Making of Sensorium Ex will be screened at 7:30 p.m. on May 15 at Film Streams’ Ruth Sokolof Theater. A panel discussion featuring Prestini, Shaughnessy and the creative team will follow.
For more information on the film series and the Common Senses Festival, visit FilmStreams.org.
Marie Schuett contributed this report for “Pass the Popcorn,” a segment from the KVNO Arts Desk.
