Patience
The black hole says to her, "My scars tell my story but they are mute & you are blind."
Maya Miro Johnson
b. 2001, USA
Co-Creator, Composer, Director
Christina af Klinteberg Herresthal
b. 1997, Norway/Sweden
Co-Creator, Mezzo-Soprano, Title Role
OUR STORY:
In 2022, I was approached by mezzo Christina Herresthal about creating a new piece for her - business as usual in classical music. But, after a few zoom calls, I finally confessed something I had been terrified to tell anyone in our high-presure field: I had been really sick for a long time with no answers and, I was starting to feel, no future. The words Christina said next changed my life: “me too.” And as we started making work together about being misdiagnosed, undiagnosed, and mistreated female patients, lots of audiences would come up to us and say “me too”, “this happened to me and my family too”! And so we starting wondering… is this the other #MeToo?
We have so much documentation of gender bias and medical gaslighting in Western healthcare, so why is nothing changing – and what can we artists do about it? Culture-makers can’t fix biased research and financial structures of medicine in society — but we CAN change the cultural standards that result in discriminatory (anti)care.
Patience proposes that all of this documentation^^^ is not so much the wrong message as the wrong medium. Since doctors interface well with data and patients interface well with stories, what better way to get them on the same page about medical care than combining the two using immersive, live music-theater performance and real data and patient testimonies?
Patience is in two parts:
1) a multimedia performance giving voice to disabled and ill women using primary source texts from real patient volunteers and historical disabled women (such as Frida Kahlo, Audre Lorde, Edith Södergran, and Yayoi Kusama)...
2) ...and a public health workshopping campaign that has the capacity to partner with any medical organization in any city the performance travels to in order to promote cultural change in local clinics on individuated levels.
Drawing inspiration from performance projects that have demonstrably served as a tool for healing in traumatized communities such as the veteran-run ballet company Exit12 and Ping Chong Company’s Secret Survivors production for survivors of child sex abuse, Patience uses first-person documents such as the direct words of historical disabled female artists and real patient volunteers to create an environment in which doctors and patients can share and discuss the issues and biases they face in a neutral art space. We use radical listening practices of experimental music and empathy practices of live theater to combat the epidemic of gender discrimination in medical care.
Our traction has included three years of support from industry leaders across the US and Europe, support from YPH’s HAPPY initiative, and a prize from Startup Yale with which we will be staging a workshop for target audiences in both the artistic and medical industries by June of 2026 here at Yale. After that incubation period, the piece will be marketed as a chance for forward-thinking and community-centric theater and opera companies to collaborate with their local health organizations and make an impact in the lives of their communities’ real patients. Investing in the future of better medical care for disabled women is investing in the future of better medical cultures for all patients, including yourselves!
What’s Opera, Doc?
Opera and theater are often inherently non-profit, labor-of-love enterprises — and that is true of Patience. We seek to create sustainable social change instead of revenue. Fortunately, our production is inexpensive due to its musically and artistically innovative approach to modular form! Each scene is scored for radically different groups of performers, pre-recorded, and then played as live electronics and multimedia films that cut across the stage as set design and with which our one onstage performer, Christina, is communicating, but fundamentally separated. This also allows the opera to be less expensive, light, and easy to travel. Formally innovative and experimental, but with an emotional core, the project transforms what opera can be and how it can serve a social purpose.
What’s Next?
A new scene commissioned by the Tanglewood Music Center, “Self-Portrait with White Coat” premieres August 10th, 2025!
A recording session in Oslo in July, 2025 and a new scene premiere/recording at Yale in November, 2025.
A performance for target audience focus groups at Yale by June of 2026, using prize funds from Startup Yale 2025!
Follow @maya.mirojohnson for updates!
Current Work Samples
About the artists:
Maya Miro Johnson combines sound, visual media, narrative, & movement into research on body|politics: the intersection of public and private health in cyborg spaces like the screen, the instrument, and her own body. As a feminist, disabled futurist, she seeks to create resonances formed of complex, multimedia networks of intermingled questions that articulate, provoke, and heal experiences and conundrums both universal and unique.
As a soloist with baroque & contemporary orchestras, & as a chamber musician with her own ensemble Hehku, Christina Sofia af Klinteberg Herresthal is a versatile, personal, & communicating artist who is passionate about working closely with living composers & championing underperformed existing works.
Our collaboration is built upon mutual interests of friendship & shared experiences of trauma. As we allowed ourselves to become radically vulnerable, we perceived an intensely causative connection between traumatic experiences we had undergone & being born in female bodies or treated as women by society. This angered & sickened us, yet inspired a distinct need to bring attention to this cancerous affliction on nearly all our cultural, medical, artistic, sexual, economic, & political systems. While we intend to bear witness to our individual stories, we also hope to find a common thread that resonates with humanity itself: living in a fragile ecosystem with only a thin shield between body & mind, of which we lose control easily. Our project rests on acknowledging this truth & condemning systemic negligence/abuse which exacerbates its painful effects. We aim to destroy insidious perceptions of AFAB bodies/pain which inflict suffering and death.
Previous Work Samples:
design concepts
Image credit:
"Yayoi Kusama's Yellow Pumpkin" by thaths is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
"A CGI Sketch of Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirrored Room" by Dominic's pics is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
"Yayoi Kusama. Editions/Artists' Books (E/AB) Fair" by j-No is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
"dot yellow world" by Stig Nygaard is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
"Identify the Artist (577)" by rverc is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
"Yayoi Kusama Museum" by jpellgen (@1179_jp) is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
"Yayoi Kusama" by alanosaur is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
"Yayoi Kusama" by rocor is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
"Máscara" by Javier Castanon is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
"Image 3" by libbyrosof is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Frida Kahlo, Henry Ford Hospital, 1932. Oil on metal, 12-13/16 x 15-13/16 inches.Collection Museo Dolores Olmedo Patiño, Mexico City © 2007 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust. Av. Cinco de Mayo No. 2, Col. Centro, Del. Cuauhtémoc 06059, México, D.F.
"Frida Kahlo and her pet fawn, Granizo." by ♭ Nocturne ♬ ♪ ♩ is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
"Frida Kahlo, 'Las Dos Fridas (The Two Fridas),' 1939" by euthman is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Frida Kahlo, The Two Fridas (Las dos Fridas), 1939, oil on canvas, 67-11/16 x 67-11/16 inches (Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City)
"audre-lorde" by 350VT is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
"100elles 20190818 Rue Audre LORDE - Rue ROUSSEAU" by Suzy1919 is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
"'WE ARE POWERFUL BECAUSE WE HAVE SURVIVED.' AUDRE LORDE" by UNARMED CIVILIAN is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
"Audre Lorde" by K. Kendall is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
"Audre Lorde" by Thomas Hawk is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
"Firland Tuberculosis Hospital beds, 1927" by Seattle Municipal Archives is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Edith Södergran portraits Public Domain