What do we owe the past—and what must we surrender to the future? Omar Musa’s The Offering (A Plastic Ocean Oratorio) is layered and evocative. A bold, ritualistic collaboration with musician Mariel Roberts, where poetry, music, and memory intertwine in a communion of reverence and reckoning.

Drawing on his Southeast Asian heritage and lived experience, Musa creates deeply personal and political work that honours ancestry while confronting ecological grief, cultural dislocation, and the fragility of memory. What sets Musa apart is his seamless fusion of diverse artistic forms—poetry, hip-hop, storytelling, and visual art. Through this blend, his fearless honesty and lyrical skill truly come alive. Musa’s dynamic presence and thoughtful activism make him a compelling voice. He not only shares stories but also ignites urgent conversations about identity, belonging, resilience, and social justice. Inviting audiences into a space where the personal and political intertwine with urgent immediacy.

The Offering journey moves from the breath of life, to vast, churning seas. It passes through tangled jungles and the villages of Musa’s Borneo homeland, into vivid memories etched deep,  culminating in a volcanic rebirth that smoulderswith both destruction and hope. His words conjure fierce, tempestuous images and raw emotion, immersing the audience in a landscape both elemental and profoundly personal. 

The story unfolds in rich, undulating layers—like rainforest soundscapes and ocean currents. Musa fuses rap, spoken word, movement, and monologue to peel back these layers, guiding the audience through memory, myth, and cultural inheritance. His words pulse and break like waves, drawing on hip-hop’s rhythm while rooted in oral traditions. Each word and note becomes part of the gift, intimate, enveloping, and impossible to ignore.

Musa’s measured, emotive embodiment of the words adds a physical layer, bringing the piece’s emotional arc vividly to life while Mariel Roberts’ live cello and soundscape become a second voice, looping and distorting sound in real time, mirroring how memory warps truth. Together, they create a multi-sensory collage where language, sound, and movement blur, each layer revealing, questioning, and reshaping what came before. Storytelling here is not a straight line, but tide and tapestry.

Roberts transcends traditional accompaniment, weaving textured soundscapes pulsing with life and urgency. It is no mere backdrop, it becomes a vital storyteller, haunting and meditative one moment, urgent and primal the next. Robert’s playing shifts fluidly between lyrical melodies and percussive strikes, creating an otherworldly voice that dialogues with Musa’s poetry. This blend deepens the emotional resonance, symbolising nature’s fragility and resilience. 

A striking four-panel backdrop of images of woodblock prints, created by Musa, forms a textured visual landscape behind the performance. These prints evoke Borneo’s dense forests and shifting seas, grounding the work in a deeply personal, ancestral geography. More than scenery, the backdrop moves with the piece’s emotional tide, reflecting memory, displacement, and environmental fragility, complementing the layered storytelling.

Omar Musa and Mariel Roberts challenge us to face the delicate threads connecting our past, our land, and our shared humanity. The Offering is both a gift and a sacrifice, freely given yet painfully surrendered. This stirring experience echoes well beyond the stage, urging us to reckon with the costs and commitments that shape our future. A call not just to witness, but to act.

See link for details: https://riversideparramatta.com.au/whats-on/the-offering/

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