“Telekinetik” is about as unconventional an opera as opera can be, and therefore more or less typical of the Prototype festival, which launched its twelfth annual season Thursday with this  work composed and performed by Khary Laurent. 

“Telekinetik” is slightly longer than the average music video – ten minutes — and indistinguishable from one; it exists only as digital theater, available for free on demand..

In interviews, Laurent has described his opera in much the same terms as the description on the Prototype website: “A would-be vigilante, tortured by a telepathic shaman, learns a difficult lesson about justice versus bloodlust.” This is a more straightforward plot than I got out of watching the video, but in any case, the story is not what’s most interesting to me about it.

We see Khary Laurent (in the credits as Ahren) asleep on a couch, apparently dreaming of an old man shrouded in mist, listed in the credits as the shaman (portrayed by Fresnel Laurent, Khary’s father?) Then we see Ahren dressing in a militaristic outfit complete with futuristic mask.

The images alternate between Ahren sleeping, the sham staring sometimes in a church, Ahren in the military outfit, sometimes in close-up, sometimes in a cell-like room with pop-art wallpaper.

Meanwhile, the music tells its own story – with Laurent alternating the unmistakable staccato rhythms and clever rhymes of rap (“light night…night light..knight type…knife fight”) with the elongated notes of opera. “Can’t be a dream with all this pain,” he sings in his  resonant baritone. We understand the character’s internal conflict sonically.

“Telekinetik” is labeled a “A Hip-Hopera” but that sells it short; the two musical genres work together in the piece, but stay distinct.

“Telekinetik” is online as part of the Prototype festival through January 19.