Actor

The Onion is a new opera in which family secrets collide with a memory-enhancing AI. Through contact with their younger selves, its characters bring to the surface the experiences that have shaped their lives: a sexist theft of scientific work, the vanishing of a parent, the erasure of a gender identity. Will the intervention of an AI hurt or heal?

The opera unfolds on an island in the Pacific Northwest where a neuroscientist has sequestered herself with her daughter to create the Onion, an AI device that allows anyone using it to re-live a personal memory. Rounding out the human roles are the Onion’s young co-inventor and the neuroscientist’s ex-partner. The Onion itself is a character in the opera: its independence and influence on the human characters seem to grow each time they use it.

EPSG:4326

The Onion

Amherst College

Huntington Theatre

Thousands lived to sleep…it’s not a fairy tale, but the incredible true story of Dr. Sacks, a young neurologist faced with treating victims of a mysterious sleeping-sickness epidemic of the early 20th century, a phenomenon of history nearly forgotten. Awakenings visits Sacks’ journey of perseverance and compassion that brought his ‘frozen’ patients back to being – but not to the world they left behind. With our current trials, this distinct retelling of the possibility of new life is even more resonant today.

Actor

David Small

Events

Past events

11 - 26 Sep, 2025

The Onion · MassOpera

Feb 25, 2023

Awakenings · Odyssey Opera

Future and recently performed repertoire

Singer in The Onion by Sawyer

MassOpera

About

David Small hasn't added a bio