We all have scars. Some seen, others hidden. Each tells a story, a marker of an experience that, though painful, became part of us. What happens when we don't just look at our scars, but try to learn and grow through them, honoring how they shaped who we are today?

The immersive experience opens with an art gallery curated from disabled artists in New York City and an offering of hands-on Alexander Technique somatic work, the modality that Hailey credits with launching her healing experience. The audience crosses into the space through a sculpture portal built from the casts and medical devices Hailey wore in childhood. Led by Hogfish co-founder and Alexander Technique teacher Matt Cahill, the experience of receiving hands-on Alexander Technique guidance continues throughout the piece for the cast and audience. At the end of Wholly Unwinding, an inclusive dance party further breaks down barriers between cast and audience, inviting people with and without disabilities to celebrate the joy of moving the bodies we have as one.

This is a seated performance. If you require accessibility accommodations, please email boxoffice@nationalsawdust.org.

The world premiere of Wholly Unwinding was commissioned, developed, and produced by Hogfish in Portland, ME.

The development of Wholly Unwinding received funding from OPERA America’s Opera Grants for Women Composers: Discovery Grants program, supported by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation.

ABOUT VISIONINTOART

VisionIntoArt (VIA) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and interdisciplinary arts production company based in New York City. Since its founding in 1999, VIA has created and produced 25+ major opera and music projects that expand artistic forms and shape the future of art — driven by equity, civic imagination, innovation, and technology. Co-founded by acclaimed composer and co-artistic director Paola Prestini (recognized by NPR as one of the world’s top 100 composers), VIA is led alongside co-artistic director, cellist Jeffrey Zeigler, and producing director Ras Dia. VIA’s projects have been presented at the New York Philharmonic, the Met Cloisters, the Kennedy Center, the Barbican (London), Bellas Artes (Mexico City), Artscape Theater (Cape Town), and more. Collaborating with artists including Ava DuVernay, Brenda Shaughnessy, Magos Herrera, Robert Wilson, Robin Coste Lewis, Vijay Iyer, and Julie Mehretu, VIA has reached 175,000+ people through live performance, digital platforms, and social impact campaigns. Since 2024, VIA has raised over $1 million from funders including the Mellon Foundation, Ford Foundation, Doris Duke Foundation, Creative Capital, NEA, and others to support major works. VIA is currently the production company in-residence at National Sawdust, a strategic partnership that incubates visionary projects, deepens philanthropic reach, and pilots new models for civic imagination and cultural impact. 

VisionIntoArt (VIA) is now in-residence at National Sawdust (NS) through a strategic partnership that strengthens both organizations. Through this residency, National Sawdust incubates, mentors, and presents select VIA projects, offering a flexible, mission-aligned venue for residencies and premieres. In parallel, the VIA team brings the concept of an Impact Lab to NS,  where we research and develop transformational cultural strategies that scale impact, create educational opportunities, and generate sustainable professional pathways for artists. For more information, visit visionintoart.org.

ABOUT HAILEY MCAVOY, COMPOSER/LYRICIST/CREATOR/MEZZO-SOPRANO

Composer-performer Hailey McAvoy, recognized as a “gorgeous-voiced mezzo-soprano," (Broadway World), is a versatile performer of opera, song, and concert. McAvoy makes her compositional debut with Wholly Unwinding, a chamber opera exploring her life with Cerebral Palsy. She will perform in the premiere with the Hogfish Regenerative Arts Festival in Portland, Maine, in July 2026, and in a New York Premiere at National Sawdust in November, 2026.

Beyond Wholly Unwinding, McAvoy’s recent operatic performances include appearing as Mem, the lead role in the world premiere of Paola Prestini’s Sensorium Ex at the Common Senses Festival in Omaha, NE, as Julia Child in Lee Hoiby’s Bon Appetit with Opera Praktikos, and as Zora in Svadba with Hogfish Regenerative Arts.

Equally active as a concert performer, McAvoy has appeared in concert with the Metropolitan Opera for their Opera Evolved series, and will perform at the Royal Opera in London in a showcase of Sensorium Ex in June 2026. She has sung at The Greene Space, the Appel Room at Carnegie Hall, National Sawdust, the Baton Rouge Symphony, Opera Ithaca, Seattle’s Sound Salon, Jazz and Classics for Change, and others.

As a performer with the neurological condition cerebral palsy, McAvoy is committed to making the performing arts more inclusive for all. She has published essays on accessibility in AGMAzine and Our Singing Bodies and she has appeared as a panelist on accessibility forums with such organizations as the Metropolitan Opera, Opera America, and The National Endowment for the Arts. To learn more, visit www.haileymcavoy.com

‍

ABOUT EDWIN CAHILL, DIRECTOR and DRAMATURG

Edwin Cahill (he/him) is guided by the belief that transformation happens through the stories told in community. Inspired by the wisdom of the more than human world, he creates artistic containers that reconnect people to themselves, one another, and the living earth.

A director, producer, librettist, performer, and concert pianist whose work spans Broadway, Off-Broadway, opera, and film/TV, Edwin dedicates his work to his Indigenous Mi'kmaq and Celtic ancestors and studies spiritual practice with Ma Tonon Kano and Puma Fredy Quispe Singona. A certified End-of-Life Doula through the University of Vermont and a student of Modern Group Leadership at the Center for Group Studies, he weaves healing, ritual, and group process into his artistic practice.

Edwin is co-founder and director of Hogfish, a regenerative performing arts company and artist residency in Maine dedicated to restoring creative and physical health to individuals, communities, and the earth. Edwin is a trustee of the Portland Museum of Art. He founded and directed the Fire Island Opera Festival and studied at the New England Conservatory, Manhattan School of Music, Tufts University, and Université de Paris III.

Edwin lives and works with his husband Matt Cahill and divides his time between his home in Wabanakik, also known as Cape Elizabeth, Maine; Lenapehoking, also known as New York City; and Mi'kma'ki, also known as Nova Scotia. www.edwincahill.com

ABOUT MATT CAHILL, REGENERATIVE ARTS FACILITATOR

Matt Cahill (he/they) believes that each of us is inextricably linked with the world around us, and that by shifting the way we pay attention to that relationship, we can find heaven on earth. His quest to find, live, create, and share that realization has drawn labyrinthine lines through traditional professions and art forms. 

Their professions include actor, singer, model, writer, director, choreographer, artistic director, administrator, producer, and teacher. Their art forms include film, television, physical theater, musical theater, concert, opera, Reiki, and the Alexander Technique. As Le Monde in Paris declared of his performance of Papageno in Peter Brook’s Molière Award-winning adaptation of The Magic Flute, Une Flûte Enchantée “you really want to hear him in either an opera or a musical. He has a big presence, a warm baritone voice, immense humanity, and the gift of an actor.”

He has performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, American Repertory Theater, Barbican Theatre on The West End, Les Bouffes du Nord in Paris, Piccolo Teatro in Milan, New York City Opera, Carnegie Hall and The Kennedy Center; sung with the London and Boston Symphony Orchestras; and appeared in the National Tour of Scrooge: The Musical, on television in Law & Order, and in the feature film The Producers! BM Juilliard School, MM Bard College Conservatory. He is a Reiki Level II Healer and an AmSAT certified teacher of the Alexander Technique, which he teaches at the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program and Circle in the Square Theatre School, in addition to their private studio in Maine and NYC for performers and non-performers alike. Synthesizing all of their experiences and asking how the arts and artist cultivation can be more regenerative to the earth and human spirit, they co-founded Hogfish where they direct the regenerative arts residency. www.mattcahill.online

‍

ABOUT HOGFISH

Founded in 2021, Hogfish is a regenerative arts production company and artist residency at the historic Beckett Castle, surrounded by an internationally recognized rose garden on the coast of Maine. Hogfish is building an artistic sanctuary and body of work dedicated to restoring creative and physical health to individuals, our communities, and our earth.

Since its creation in 2021 by husbands, co-founders/directors, and Broadway and Metropolitan Opera artists and educators Matt & Edwin Cahill, Hogfish has given more than 30 performances to over 3000 audience members in a dozen locations across Southern Maine, created “opera like no one could imagine” (The Portland Press Herald), and hosted more than 54 artists-in-residence, incubating the next generation of emergent regenerative art. www.hogfish.org