Aqua Net & Funyuns is a podcast opera featuring five newly-commissioned, original stories, each written by a different librettist/composer combo. Drawing from the style of audio fiction podcasts, the 25-minute, serial episodes are designed specifically to tell compelling narratives with voices, instruments and immersive sound design.
Each episode highlights the cliff-hanger nature of serial narratives and the playful possibilities of the podcast medium, by alternating between all five operas in “round-robin” style. Listeners will need to tune in over multiple episodes to hear the complete story.
The stories and librettos featured in Aqua Net & Funyuns emerged from a one-month iteration of EiO's innovative Writers' Room project, which brought together a group of writers from the world of podcast fiction to quickly create individual episodes, using the model of a television writer's room. In the case of Aqua Net & Funyuns, the four librettists each tell separate stories that are linked through hidden “easter egg” details that appear in each episode. Developed through a communal process of feedback and workshopping, the librettos share an embrace of genre fiction, non-normative relationships, otherworldly phenomena, emotional hi-jinks, and compelling characters.