ELENA
ŠTROK
A storyteller’s life is
an excitement indeed:
All tales of unknown
I hope once to read
UPCOMING
2026
Rijksakademie (NL)
Tech Fellow | Print workshop
artist residency
Spring 2026
Gallery VN (CRO)
Baby Universe
Solo show
RE:MASTER OPERA
HAVE BEEN HERE
Concept, dramaturgy, direction and music Re:Master Opera collective
Light design: Elena Štrok
Costumes: Caz Egelie, Elena Štrok
Performers: Amanda Payne, Ari Teperberg, Caz Egelie,
Diane Mahín, luz, Nadia Bakhshi, Sabine Pendry, SasaHara,
Simone Goslinga, featuring Laura Bohn as a special guest
Production: Ingeborg Tenk
Performed at Opera Forward Festival ‘24 at Dutch National Opera
Duration 45 min
2024
“no one ever told me we should have already been here” took place in the emergency- staircase of the Dutch National Opera. In this site-specific music-theatrical piece, a telephone caller (Laura Bohn) unknowingly intrudes on a strange community. Her well-developed speech and their dissociated sounds echo in the same space, slowly turning into patterns as they pollute and influence each other. Inspired by the work of Pauline Oliveros and Cornelius Cardew, we decided to create and work with our own text-scores. We composed musically, textually and physically in the space and scripted these differing scenes into one giant, printable script-score that decided our actions, text and musical creation during the piece. The resulting performance dealt with linguistic and musical (mis)communication, strongly thematised by the uncanny.
HAVE BEEN HERE
Created byRe:Master Opera collective
Performed at Opera Forward Festival ‘23 at Dutch National Opera and Synergy Festival
Duration 35 min
2023
I fell asleep on minute 6 was an in-depth exploration of our collective psyche through researching our dreams. The piece revolves around the act of Dream-Excavation: diving into the content and form of dreams as a way of poetically exploring both the individual and collective subconscious. We departed from a shared curiosity on the two-phase sleep pattern of medieval times, the uncanny essence of dreams, and the incredible dream documentation of Dion McGregor. Over a few weeks, we recorded our dreams in the freshest form possible: at the very second of waking up from them. The outcomes were everlasting yawns, hypnotising vocal fries, shredded speeches and absurdist storylines. Using the words and vocal qualities of our dreams, we composed this work using means of collage, pastiche and layering.
Created byRe:Master Opera collective
Performed at ADE Festival ‘23 at H*Art Museum
Duration 45 min
2023
Welcome to the House of the Ruler was presented during ADE in the fall of 2023 at the H*art Museum. Created in response to the opening of the exhibition I came, I saw, I met my doom on Julius Caesar and Elif Murat’s sound piece Sonic Phantasmagoria (v-S), the performance takes the form of a hypothetical funeral for the Roman ruler.
This is not a remake of Handel’s 18th-century opera Giulio Cesare, but a contemporary reimagining of its political and emotional terrain. Together with Re:Master Opera and Elif Murat, the performance unfolds in the Kerkzaal (Church Room) of the H*art Museum, using the space as an active participant in an exploration of grief, power, and social hierarchy. Mourning becomes a performative act: while Julius Caesar is dead, his presence looms large, and the funeral turns into a stage where voices compete, alliances shift, and attention is fiercely contested. Grief is not reserved for the faint-hearted; most characters seize the moment to assert themselves, hoping to step into the spotlight left vacant by the fallen ruler.
Created byRe:Master Opera collective
Performed at ADE Festival ‘22 at Tempel Amsterdam
Duration 30 min
2022
In I-Human care if you cry, the fresh class of Re:Master Opera at Sandberg Institute had the chance to freely use the freshly released album, Cousin of Amsterdam- based artist COUSIN. COUSIN's is a blend of pop, minimal, and ambient with a strong gravitational pull, creating a tidal push-and-pull tension. The artist gave us access to all the stems of their album, which we have reknit together into a new creation, with a more upbeat energy. The production of this work turned out to be a field research in collective creation, out of which the backbone of Re:Master Opera emerged. In this 35-minute opera performance, we evoke the friction between individual and collective, the process of human data harvesting, and human-to-non-human relationships.