A stage show about the life and music of Sinead O’Connor is set to open in Manchester this June.
When Sonya Tayeh first heard the news of O’Connor’s passing in 2023, she says she had an almost instant vision of ten women standing in a straight line at the edge of a stage.
Almost 3 years later, Tayeh’s dream is finally coming to life, as she is set to direct and choreograph the first ever stage production dedicated to the life and music of Sinead O’Connor.
O’Connor has been a part of Tayeh’s life since she first heard her music blaring from car windows in her home city of Detroit, she says.
That visceral experience of hearing Sinead O’Connor for the first time is the reason why Tayeh – and maybe the rest of the world – considers the depth of emotion in O’Connors music “unmatched”.
The performance, which is titled The Surge: An Ode to Sinéad O’Connor, will start on June 25th at Manchester’s The Hall, and features a company of ten women while interweaving O’Connors music and spoken excerpts of her memoir.
A biopic about the Irish singer was also announced last August, which according to her management, O’Connor was already considering at the time of her death. She has also already been the subject of a documentary called Nothing Compares, released the year before she died.
At the time of her death, she was close to finishing an album and was planning a world tour, which included stops in Australia and New Zealand.
In her will, O’Connor reportedly told her kids to “milk” her unreleased music for all its worth.
With all this posthumous success, fingers crossed O’Connors family will hopefully see some royalties – just as she would have wished.
