Operatic Safe Spaces

I have a new motto for opera!

Opera: A Safe Space for Exploring Uncomfortable Ideas!

Let's define some of those words. 

Opera: stories told through singing in front of a public audience

A: an indefinite article

Safe: secure from danger

Space: any expanse where humans can congregate physically, musically, or intellectually

for: a preposition

Exploring: to examine for the purpose of discovery

Uncomfortable: a state of unease

Ideas: a conception in the mind that can be shared

Over the past few years, two phrases have percolated into the consciousness and policies of many in our western world: "Safe Space" and "I'm uncomfortable with fill in the blank".  Usually, once someone becomes uncomfortable, they now begin to feel unsafe. Being uncomfortable is seen as something almost dangerous, akin to an assault of some sort. To feel comfortable is now something seen as a positive ideal, in all things. But that's where a danger lies, at least for us artists trying to create new, innovative works of art (dance, theatre, opera, compositions, productions, paintings, etc.).

To create art, one must push past the comfortable. Nothing new ever came from a place of comfort. Even authors who work in comfortable surroundings (I'm one of those, currently sitting in front of a roaring fireplace sipping a bit of scotch) must move into areas of their intellect that are undiscovered countries, and therefore not at all comfortable, in order to write anything that's close to interesting.

All one has to do is read or watch actors talk about their process to understand that they run from the comfortable. Viola Davis and Meryl Streep are just two who jump to mind. They've gone on record to say that if they find themselves acting from a place of comfort, their work in front of the camera will be terrible. The same if you read interviews with composers, writers, sculptors - literally anyone who creates. Comfort is not sought, in fact it is seen as quite dangerous. When Armie Hammer was interviewed about taking the part of Oliver in this year's amazing film "Call Me By Your Name", he said "It scared me. It made me nervous. The reason I had to do this project was because it made me feel uncomfortable."

I've blogged about running towards what scares you (It's called "Fear In Opera".) I really believe this and know it to be true! 

It is a truism that during the learning process there will be many moments of discomfort. Just the physicality of singing is not normal. No one sustains screams on organized pitches set to poetry in order to communicate ideas in real life. That's opera! In order to do so, one has to work hard to learn the music itself (this is seldom easy), work to pronounce the text correctly (not comfortable), work to memorize the music and text (not comfortable), and then once staging rehearsals begin even more discomfort comes into play: learning the blocking, stage combat (not comfortable and initially can be physically dangerous), simulating emotions from love to rage to grief (any emotion that might be 100% comfortable is certainly not very interesting on the operatic stage), or simulating physical love onstage (truly not comfortable -- put your hand here, embrace sideways while still singing loud high notes into each other's faces, practicing kissing, slapping, or formalized bowing, oftentimes timed to a musical score's tempo controlled by another uncomfortable entity, the conductor!) Most of the parts of creating an opera are the opposite of comfortable. 

Now over the course of rehearsals, many of these things become incredibly comfortable, or at least manageable. That's what rehearsal is for and that's why we rehearse. Yet, I find some young singers don't understand that notion. If something is asked of them - for instance, cross to stage left and throw a handkerchief at someone - and if it might feel uncomfortable, then a judgement sometimes gets made that it should not be attempted because it makes them (themselves, usually not their character) feel uncomfortable. Instead of trying it (i.e. rehearsing it), the idea is dismissed and another more comfortable idea is explored instead, oftentimes without giving the initial idea a try.  (Even writing that paragraph and knowing someone will read it with the intention to prove that those ideas are wrong is really uncomfortable for me!) I'm not talking about rehearsing in an arena of non-consent. Consent is a totally different subject and extremely important in order to make everyone in the room comfortable and at ease. If people are currently rehearsing in a space without a dialogue about consent, then everything should stop and that conversation should happen. Why? It's 2018, that's why.

And that's one of the paradoxes about comfort and learning. In order to really act, one needs to feel at ease. The environment of the rehearsal space creates this feeling of, for lack of a better word, comfort. But once everyone moves into this safe space of comfort, we have to be able to start exploring the uncomfortable. This is an important detail. It's why actors love working with certain directors, why singers love working with certain conductors. There is a state of ease at play, a sense that everyone will be taken care of somehow, so that all can do their best work possible. And often that best work is found in uncomfortable places.

Why would someone ask someone else to feel uncomfortable? Being asked to be uncomfortable is now seen by some as akin to assault. Part of the problem is that it's becoming increasingly difficult to have conversations about polarizing ideas, as well as understanding the difference between the person in the rehearsal and the character being rehearsed. (The latter half of that sentence is the important part.)

There is a difference here. In opera we explore ideas that are meant to entertain a public audience. Opera is, as I love to say, "never about the day nothing happened." Opera is never about singing emotions that are boring, pleasant, or comfortable. These characters being sung by operatic performers are oftentimes terrible people, or victims, or assholes, or abusers. or family, or gods and goddesses, or queens, or supernatural beings, or regular people caught up in an irregular moment or event. But singing Tosca does not require the soprano to be at one with murdering a potential rapist and become a suicidal diva who sings one of the great final lines in all of opera before leaping to her death. There is a separation between subject and player, character and singer.

One of the failures of education today is showing up more and more whenever I work with young singers: an inability to understand the rational and irrational ideas present in all the elements of their art form.  Teaching critical thinking and problem solving (the rational) as well as allowing students to explore their imagination and emotional inner lives (the irrational) seems to be lacking in many backgrounds of singers I now work with -- mind you, not just in the academic world, but with the professional young artists and artists that I've worked with recently. It is becoming more and more a challenge to get singers to see beyond the score, to imagine worlds not present, to sing horizontal phrases that aren't tied to vertical beats, to act on the edge of emotions, to make audacious choices, to explore dangerous ideas and ideals that are, I clear my throat, uncomfortable.

If one wants to be a success, to innovate, to put themselves ahead of the pack, to make themselves heard and seen above the rest, to be known as a creative artist or exciting performer, one has to run towards what scares you. One has to runaway from the comfortable and easy choices, the things that make everyone else stay happily in their safe arenas. 

Because, you see, if one deems a space "safe", it actually deems all other spaces "unsafe". How about a crazy idea? All spaces should be "safe"? Is that possible? I believe it should be, at least in the artistic arena of the rehearsal space and the operatic stage. Safe from comfort. Safe from easy choices that make no one think beyond themselves. Safe from accepting the status quo. Safe from emotional restrictions and physical repressions. But especially, safe from censorship.

The operatic process could become a tool to reteach the world how to free themselves. To teach the world that it is okay to be both rational and irrational. Maybe that might make the world a safer place for ideas, thoughts, and differences of opinions. 

Opera could help teach the world to become a safe place to explore uncomfortable ideas.

Credo: My He(art) Is Not A Clock

Sense8 blog #2
There's a lovely moment in Season One of Netflix's "Sense8". It takes place in the Anahuacalli Museum south of Mexico City. The museum was the brain child of Diego Rivera, the amazing artist who also happened to be Frida Kahlo's husband.

In the episode, Lito - a closeted Mexican gay action-hero celebrity - is mourning the breakup with his boyfriend, Hernando.  During multiple flashbacks, we overhear the two men talking about love and art:
Hernando reminds Lito of a line from one of his movies: "My heart is not a clock." Lito remembers that his character was always late prompting Hernando to say how much he loved that line because it was both "an apology that is also an anthem."

Later, Hernando (speaking in front of a Diego mural) says to Lito, "Love is not something we wind up, something we set or control. Love is just like art. A force that comes into our lives without any rules, expectations or limitations, and every time I hear that line, I am reminded that love, like art, must always be free."

At the heart of art, there is no mechanism. Love and Art share this. To create an algorithm for love would be impossible - although many are currently trying. To create the same for art would totally screw it up. Deep down, we know that our hearts are not clocks. Often, love comes to us at the wrong time in our lives. My wife and I fell in love when we were in college, but we were not ready to marry. That happened seven years later after much angst and passion. Love finds people who aren't ready for it. People go looking for love and can't find it. Love is a mystery.

I find that Love, actually, just happens.

Talk to any musician or actor and they'll try to articulate this idea of "happening". Being "musical" is something that can't be taught, it just happens. Being "in the moment" is something that acting teachers try to work on with their students, oftentimes through various methods - which are just other forms of clocks and mechanisms really - in order to let things happen organically. Musicians recreate scores written in black dots on white pages, interpreting tempo markings and other notions (like "Allegro" or "Very slow" or "half-note = 76") which are also simply different ways of saying "time moves like this". Again, another clock.

But Music is not a clock. It is not something one winds up, or something that can be set to control its elemental pieces. Music is a force that enters into our lives without any rules, limitations, or expectations. Music, like love, must always be free.

Of our many anxieties, Musicians truly fear the notion of dragging or rushing. It is a deeply ingrained idea that music has a "tempo" and that that "tempo" must be decided upon and kept. This comes from the silly - and terribly amateurish idea - that music moves through its bars in equal time. So equal, one can set a clock to it. We call this clock a METRONOME. It was, perhaps, the worst thing ever invented where music's concerned.

You see, all music flows forward at various speeds. Listen to any great pianist and you will find that you can't find a metronomic marking that holds past a few bars or so, even though there's no "marking" from the composer that says "speed up a bit here" or "drag a bit here." Music is not metronomic. Humans are not metronomes. Our heart rates move up and down all the time. See a person you're angry with and what happens? See your cat getting ready to jump into your aunt-who-hates-cats lap and what happens? Voices are human things and so each one will vibrate differently, causing the shifts in vibrato and breath that should change how fast or slow one aria gets sung by various singers.

Debussy said it best: "You know what I think about metronome marks? They're right for a single bar, like 'roses with a morning life'. Only there are those who don't hear music and who take these marks as authority to hear it still less!"

Debussy got it, I think. But most musicians are simply scared of tempi. Why? They get yelled at for dragging, or rushing by conductors or their teachers. "Don't Rush!" is something we've all heard more than a few times in our life. Another example of why: during the weeks it takes to put on operas, singers rehearse with a pianist, and then in the last few days they sing with an orchestra. Inevitably they notice that things feel differently and chalk it up to "the tempi are different", or "this conductor changes tempi once he's in front of an orchestra". While this might be true, something else is causing the perception that time is moving differently when one changes from piano to orchestral accompaniment: Pianos are percussive instruments, and many times the rehearsal pianists - if they are young - rush the conductors. Orchestras seldom rush, and most of the instruments playing create sound in a non-percussive manner, changing the time it takes for their sounds to reach the ears of the singers. So parts of an aria or duet might feel too slow, other parts too fast.

We train young conductors and pianists to "keep a tempo". We talk to singers about time like it is fixed somehow. They work to find "their tempo" for this or that aria. Instead, I think singers and pianists should go listen to recordings of great singers and conductors. Quickly one discovers a more organic flow of time, a flexibility, that also appears to change phrase by phrase. The sense of time was more horizontal and less fixed before our current age of anxiety. We fear TIME in music so much that the solution seems to be to set a clock into it's heart in order to control it.

This clock sits at the centre of all mediocre music-making.

That's what happens when we fear something. We set out to control it. (Here's a link to my blog on fear: Fear In Opera)

We created metronomes long ago, but we continue to create invisible ones today. Too many put these clocks into the heart of their art.

My credo? I believe that My Art's Heart Is Not a Clock. I believe it is another kind of force more akin to Love, that lives without limitations and expectations.

Those who want to know what to expect before the Art is created, those who want to put limits on Art, or those who want Art and Artists to have adequately comfortable lives that are safe, shouldn't be leading our world, or our musical worlds. Many are, and that is the really frightening thing.

So toss out your art's clock. Allow love back in. Love that has no bounds, no rules, no walls. You'll find a release and a freedom that is truly exhilarating and, perhaps, transformative.

And spend some time checking out Frida and Diego. They were cool.

The Eye of the Beholder: Art is Love Made Public

“Art is love made public” is one of my favourite episodes from Season Two of Netflix's "Sense8" series (created by the amazing Lana and Lilly Wachowski, who brought us The Matrix). There are many characters and the plots are too vast to go into. For the purposes of this blog, this scene focuses on two male lovers living in Mexico who, up to this point, thought their affair was private: Lito, is a machismo action movie star, his lover Hernando is an Art History professor.

While discussing a piece of art in his class, Hernando Feuntes (Lito’s lover) finishes his lecture with: “It (art) is the language of seeing and being seen.”

Then the class starts to giggle as their phones all light up. When Hernando asks what’s going on, one of the men in the class shares what they're all looking at by putting a viral photo up on the lecture room view screen, for all to see. The picture that has gone viral is a photo of Hernando and Lito having sex (and it is quite explicit.) Everyone laughs. The guy who put it onto the screen then wryly asks “Is this art, Mr. Feuntes?”

After taking a moment, Hernando decides to continue the lecture using the picture as the subject...

“Is it art, Mr. Valles? Why don’t you tell us what you see?”

The student says “Looks like shit-packer porn.”

Nervous giggles emanate from the other students.

Hernando retorts: “Shit-packer porn, that is very interesting. ‘Cause this is where the relationship between subject and object reverses. The proverbial shoe shifting to the other foot. And what was seen, now reveals the seer. Because the eyes of the beholder find not just beauty where they want, but also shallowness, ugliness, confusion, and prejudice. Which is to say the beholder will always see what they want to see, suggesting that what you want to see, Mr. Valles, is in fact, shit-packer porn.”

More chuckles from the students, while Mr. Valles looks on uncomfortably.

Hernando finishes, “Whereas someone else, someone with a set of eyes capable of seeing beyond societal conventions, beyond their defining biases, such a beholder might see an image of two men caught in an act of pleasure. Erotic to be sure, but also... vulnerable. Neither aware of the camera. Both of them connected to the moment of each other. To love. And as I have suggested before in this class, art is love made public.

There are many moments like this in Sense8. Turning societal conventions on their heads and asking questions of the viewers themselves. Trying to take a public art form - a tv series - and move it back into a person's private life, to get them to think about their own biases and ideas.

A colleague of mine, Paul Yachnin (Tomlinson Shakespeare Professor at McGill University) once said during a public talk that “theatre (he was not just meaning Shakespeare’s theatre, but all theatre) is the private made public.” He went on to say that one of the terrible things about incarcerating another human being is that you remove their ability to have a private life.

Social media is certainly making most people’s private lives, their thoughts, their meals, their dates, their holidays, their everything super public. For some, the public might mean a closed group of friends, for others, a much larger group of friends of friends, and for some a total public presence (like our dear President Trump). All their thoughts sent out into the world. Their PRIVATE MADE PUBLIC.

Social Media is, in its essence, THEATRE.

If we return to Hernando’s point, that Art is Love Made Public, and if private-made-public Social Media posts are theatre, then Art and Love can also be thought of as a form of Theatre. And as all social media seems to be self-focused, many people are finding that their lives, their literal faces, can be made into a type of public theatre. It’s yet another reason why opinions are being transformed into facts, why people are being duped by fake news – it’s hard to discern real from fake in a world where everything is theatre.

For theatre isn’t real. It is fake.

Yet, social justice warriors on the left, and Trump supporters on the right, are having problems recognizing the difference. They see productions and think that images and words created in the theatre are real, or are offensive, or... dangerous. The uproar this summer with the Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar is a perfect example of people not figuring out what’s theatre and what’s real. Trump supporters stood up in the theatre to protest the show’s JC looking a lot like Trump (after JC gets assassinated), then real security show up to remove the protestors. But, and this is the meta-gone-crazy moment, later in the play fake protestors stand up in the audience (as part of the play) and protest the assassination and are escorted from the venue by fake security guards. But then the meta goes beyond the horizon: real security guards were needed to escort the fake ones to ensure their safety from the real protestors, or I guess others in the audience upset about the protesting itself. Many in the audience were left perplexed.

But this isn’t only a problem with people who are blinded by their support of Trump, or who haven’t read the play to know what it is actually about. (These protestors are often derided by us liberals for being ignorant, fyi.) Ignorance lives on both sides of the political coin. However, the left sees itself as not just holding the upper hand, but holding the correct hand. Productions of operas, movies, paintings, and books are being singled out for being politically incorrect, oftentimes without realizing the subtleties of the history of the pieces, or the lives of the authors/artists. They are doing the exact same thing as the JC protestors – trying to shut down the private made public. They are trying to control art.

Often the people being silenced are being singled out because of their outward appearance, i.e. their race or their visible cultural identity (often, this is put upon them by those criticizing their works.) Someone might see me and make the obvious - but incorrect - conclusion that I'm a straight, white, male. But my personal identity is much more fluid (and complex) than that and for some of my ancestors, they were far from being considered "white". I'm mostly a European mix (Scottish/Danish), but my Catholic Irish immigrants and "Bohemian" immigrant ancestors on my mother's side would argue their point: they were not allowed into WASP establishments, institutions, or public groups, so how "white" were they? My mom was called Cat-licker by the same protestant kids who would wave their hands over their noses when she passed because she smelled like fish (Catholics ate lots of fish I gather.) Would anyone say her struggles as a young Catholic child in an all Lutheran small town were not caused by her perceived identity?

But the defining aspect of my identity is my atheism. According to the recent polls, being an atheist makes me the most hated type of person in America; the most "immoral". My privilege is great, but I could never run for President. A guy with a middle name "Hussein" has a better chance of being President than any atheist would have (at least currently.) Times might change, we shall see. I make no travel plans to certain countries because my atheism is grounds for my execution.

Should Art or Artists be seen solely through the lens of their identity? And if so, what is that identity? For example, is my art atheistic or should it be distilled down to that of a white married guy, negating my actual and more complex identity? If names and identities were hidden from the public, would art be seen and heard differently? On the operatic stage we can see people and make opinions about their identity, but I don't think we can hear identity. We can't hear race, for instance. Sometimes we can hear an accent (Americans singing in French, the French singing in English, the English singing in 'Merican), but usually the training of a professional opera singer overrides their cultural background. In an art form that is predominantly about hearing, shouldn't that be the dominant element when discussing an opera singer's performance?

Time does move forward and no issue lives beyond its time without mutation. Issues typically evolve. Times change, people change. The Eyes of the Beholders change. But the ART stays the same. It is who is seeing the art that changes. The seers think the art has changed, but it hasn’t. If you understand that, then you're more enlightened than most. The Art is just revealing the seer's current biases, their current issues, their current hearts and minds.

So – what are The Eyes of the Beholders, i.e. the public, revealing what’s in their own hearts and minds now? Currently, I think they reveal a lot of hatred, bias, close-mindedness, anxiety, worry, anger, offensiveness, defensiveness, shallowness, ugliness, confusion, prejudice, but mostly: fear. Otherwise, I think we’d see more discussions about how Art – whether it’s public art, theatre, music, poetry, murals, or even facebook posts – is empathetic, enlightening, open-minded, positive, educational, beautiful, spiritual, or culturally broadening.

As Hernando stated, Art is the language of seeing and being seen. Art is love made public.

What do you see when your Eye beholds art? What does that say about you?

Nothing Is Original

Nothing Is Original

#RipItOff

I recently saw a tee-shirt on a friend of a friend on Facebook. Very simple “Nothing Is Original” with “#RipItOff” hashtag below.

Simple statement. So very, very true.

The challenge, for us in opera, is to appear original. Most of us know this is not possible and it’s only an illusion. The score is someone else’s (oftentimes many else’s – composer, librettist, editor(s), performance traditions by long-ago dead singers), the staging is derivative of all previous stagings every seen on the stage (even if updated, characters must still tell a story with lights, costumes, and sets), the singers’ ornaments are from the past directly, or heavily borrowed, and the tempi of any conductor is well within most ballparks of what’s come before.

What gives us originality is the ever-new collaborations that are put into place for each new production. New singers, a new design, new ideas on these old ideas, a new venue, new players, new approaches, etc.

To think that many young singers don’t want to listen to recordings, or watch older singers perform to research their repertoire or a new role, is – for me – the height of hubris.

And the height of denying the fact that Nothing Is Original.

All operas are not original. All Art is simply not original.

Opera – all of it – springs from something else. All contain elements found in previous pieces. There’d be no opera without the camerata from Florence’s renaissance, but even those guys were looking way back into time to Greek drama. We have the original castratis to thank for the later 19^th century bel canto renaissance. Mozart begat Rossini who begat Donizetti who begat Verdi who begat Puccini who begat Menotti who begat Heggie. The ties that bind, the degrees of separation, are so tight between all of the operas we work on every year. The dance that happens is a dance between the past and the future. To find the future, one does need knowledge of the past.

When we see or hear something new – say an amazing Robert Wilson production or new ornaments previously not thought of by Bartoli or a conductor flex time in a Mozart ensemble or a new opera by a young composer – we get excited. Wow! Now THIS is original.

No. Nothing Is Original

So: RIP IT OFF! Do it with aplomb and acknowledgement for what’s come before. Dare others to find your “inspirations”. But please, please, do not pretend you’re being original. You are combining the same ingredients into a new dish to be served, albeit in hopefully a creative, fresh, and tasty manner that seems beyond brilliant.

And the flip side to that is, dare to be derivative. Learn from all the others who’ve come before you. Working on a Carmen? Have you listened to every single recording that’s out there? Learning a Mozart aria for the first time? Have you watched a video of your aria sung by the great ones?

Technique is an individual thing, but it is the derivative tool that powers opera. You take other’s technical ideas and make them your own.  Do the same with your artistic choices.

Basically, own your own originality.