Where Do You Go When Home Is No Longer An Option?

Some stories feel urgent or intense because they're happening somewhere else. disPLACE feels urgent because it's happening here.

This August, Rising Waters Collective presents the North American premiere of disPLACE, a chamber opera composed by Raquel García-Tomás and Joan Magrané Figuera, with a libretto by playwright Helena Tornero. The work, a co-production with Theatre Off Jackson, comes to life exactly where its themes are most alive: the heart of Seattle's International District.

Two Acts. One Apartment. A City Transformed.

disPLACE tells two stories that share a single space - an apartment in the center of Barcelona. In the first act, sung in English, we meet a couple confronting a relationship and identity crisis. In the second act, sung in Catalan, the language native to Barcelona and Catalunya, another couple living in that same apartment is saying farewell to the home they've been forced to leave. The stories are separated in time but bound together by place, and by the forces that reshape cities and displace the people who make them whole. Projected translations are provided throughout, so every word will be clearly understood.

The choice to present the second act in Catalan is not incidental. It's a political and artistic act, a way of rooting the story in the specific culture, community, and language of Barcelona, and honoring what is lost when that fabric is torn.

Barcelona: A Warning Written in Real Estate

To understand disPLACE, it helps to understand Barcelona and the decades of upheaval that inspired it.

The 1992 Olympics put Barcelona on the global map. The city underwent sweeping transformation: new infrastructure, renovated waterfronts, a gleaming international profile. Entire neighborhoods were demolished to make way for facilities and development. Longtime residents, including Roma communities forcibly displaced, were pushed out to make room for a city being designed for the world's gaze rather than its own people.

What followed was a cycle that has become familiar in cities everywhere. Tourism boomed. Property values climbed. And then the 2008 financial crisis hit. Tens of thousands of families who had taken on mortgages during the speculation years found themselves unable to pay and were evicted. Banks were bailed out. Renters were not. When the recovery came, it came for investors and short-term rental platforms. By the time Barcelona's rental prices peaked in the mid-2010s, average rents had risen more than 25%, and longtime residents were being pushed out to peripheral municipalities far from their communities, jobs, and lives. In 2024, Barcelonans took to the streets in mass protests, some carrying water guns, others carrying signs: Tourists go home.

Seattle Knows This Story Too

The International District has been home to generations of immigrants, refugees, and working-class families. It a multiracial, multilingual neighborhood where Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, and 17 other languages are spoken alongside English. It is one of the most culturally significant neighborhoods in the Pacific Northwest.

It is also one of the most vulnerable.

In 2016, the City of Seattle's own growth report identified the CID as a neighborhood at the highest risk of displacement. The tech boom accelerated pressures that had been building for decades. From 1970 to 2020, parts of Seattle's Central District saw the percentage of Black residents drop from more than 90% down to 11%. More than 4,500 homes have been constructed, permitted, or proposed in the Chinatown-International District since 2019 and this is development that brings density but, without strong protections, also brings displacement. Community organizations have been fighting back: groups like the CID Coalition, Seattle Artist Coalition for Equitable Development, and Pacific Rim Solidarity Network have been organizing against the displacement of working people, small businesses, elders, and low-income tenants.

disPLACE doesn't offer answers. It offers witness. And it offers it in the neighborhood itself.

The Production

disPLACE features performance artist Julia Benzinger, baritone José Rubio, cellist Emily Hu, and violist Kayleigh Miller. Directed by Kelly Kitchens, and conducted by Jay Rozendaal, with stage management by Quinn Chase and assistant stage management by Amanda Balter. Presented in partnership with Theatre Off Jackson at 409 7th Ave S, Seattle - a venue that has long been a cultural anchor for the International District.

Performances begin Friday, August 21, 2026.

Early Bird Tickets: 20% Off Through March 20th

Tickets are on sale now. Use code dis20 at checkout for 20% off — available through March 20th only. All seating is General Admission.

[Get your tickets here.]