Many operas in the standard repertoire are based on fairy tales and fantasy. But there are very few films about the global queer feminist revolution, and even fewer with the hero’s name beginning with “Warren” and ending with the unusual nickname of genital appendages.
Both are in “The Fagots and Their Friends Between Revolutions”.,” A new musical drama by composer Philip Venables and writer/director Ted Huffman. After premiered at the Manchester International Festival on Thursday, it will travel with an initial roster of 15 performers to the Aix-en-Provence Festival in early July and then to NYU Skirball in New York this fall. It will be performed in other locations, including
Venables and Huffman’s two previous collaborations, 4.48 Psychosis, an opera based on Sarah Kane’s play about mental illness and suicide, and the 2016 death of the Russian police in a live-streaming confrontation with the Russian police. The opera “Dennis and Katya,” about teenage lovers, won the award. They are acclaimed artists who find beauty in the extremes of form and subject matter.
Their new show, a liberal adaptation of activist Larry Mitchell’s 1977 self-published gay liberation fantasy novel of the same name, is a continuation of that broader project, as well as Venables speaking out in a video interview. As in, “a change in tone.”
The work, like the novel, covers thousands of years of human history and tells the story of the rise of an imperialist capitalist patriarchy called Ramrod. Resistance to patriarchy by sexual and racial others that patriarchy has created. and was ultimately defeated by the Revolutionary Queer Coalition.
“There are two important things to remember about the coming revolution,” says the fairy tale on paper and on stage. “First, we [expletive] Kicked. The second is that we win. ”
For 90 minutes of the show, Rosie Elnair’s deceptively simple, no-frills stage serves as the model for this impromptu revolutionary utopia. Everything you hear is what you see. Fifteen performers perform mostly memorized scores in a mixed ensemble of baroque and contemporary instruments. In addition to upright pianos and electronic organs, the sounds of harpsichords, theorbos and violas da gambas resound.
The result is a tour of history that is both entertaining and politically serious. “These stories of oppression and resistance play out in concert as part of coping with and resisting oppression,” Venables said. And this work proposes and enacts the destruction of what it calls the “men’s category,” a classification of race, sex, expertise and tastes that it claims prevents the majority of the world from becoming free.
“We all want to move beyond identity politics to this universalism at some stage of utopia,” Venables said.
Yandas, the actor and choreographer who narrates much of the show, said in a video interview that the show’s format reflects its policies. The utopia dreamed of in this work is one in which everyone has different talents, relying on each other and demonstrating true teamwork. ”
When Mitchell wrote the book, he was inspired by Lavender Hill, a gay commune of which he was a founding member in Ithaca, New York. Such communes, rejecting both the heterosexual society and the gay movement, which is considered consumerist and assimilationist, were rampant in the late 1970s. and America in the early 1980s. It was a place filled with political theory, collective cultural expression, folk and baroque music. “Karl later handed a visiting harpsichordist a copy of ‘Eros and Civilization,'” says a prominent quote from a diary of life on the commune in the mid-1970s, published in the gay liberation journal RFD. ing.
Many of the activists, like Mitchell, have settled on the word “famous” to connote gender-extension, gender-affirming, and politically radical homosexual subjectivity, but the collective movement has the power to change the world. He believed that folk and baroque dance had the power to change the world. It was a form infused with political radicalism.
In a video interview, Venables called this “joy and joy, the politics of play and community,” describing what he seeks to express in his musical style, “form and genre, in the way we dress and tell stories.” Yes, with folk music.” And there are also references to baroque music associated with community music production, social gatherings, and social ceremonies. ”
One aria, for example, begins as a duet between soprano Mariamiel Ramagat and harpist Joy Smith, before being joined by gunvist Jacob Garside in a colorful evening dress at the glockenspiel, which marks the song’s change to swing. help encourage. bossa nova and eventually shanty with accordion accompaniment.
The book that inspired all of this has recently had a resurgence, albeit, or perhaps because it is rooted in a particular political moment. Copies and PDFs have circulated among gay artists and activists like Samizdat, and it was republished in 2018 after being out of print for years.
“I felt uncomfortable doing something mildly utopian and set in the 1970s, so I questioned how Ted would want to direct it,” said Kit, one of the show’s narrators. Green said. “But he’s doing it in a way, we’re not part of the book. We’re telling it. There’s distance. We’re in this huge continuum of time.” And when things feel hopeless, time moves on and this feeling that we are part of something greater feels different and exciting. We need revolutionary enthusiasm, but what does that mean now? We should all ask that question.”
As the performers gathered on stage for dress rehearsal this week, musical director and cast member Ishani Perippanayagam said: If something doesn’t go as expected, just say yes. So let’s go. ”
In the show, technical bravado feats (in an early scene, Garside plays intricate music on a gamba while lying on his back on a blanket being dragged across the stage) are performed in arias accompanied by a trained violin. are combined with simpler collective behaviors such as Conor Glikmanis plays and many of the performers play open strings on violins, creating simple harmonies. Pelippanayagam gives some cues, but most of the time the musicians perform without a conductor.
“We wanted to create an atmosphere of community on stage and try to break down some of the hierarchies and traditional relationships that different art forms have on stage, especially in classical music.” Huffman said in a video interview. “It is not in the spirit of amateurism that asks everyone on stage to participate in everything, but in the spirit of experimenting with one’s creativity and finding beauty in the simple.”
Flutist Eric Lamb said the song’s challenge lies in “physicality and movement.” He added that he hopes the audience will “witness this love and understanding on stage as 15 people from different spaces of the queer community support and care for each other.”
These artists believe that the revolution this work is intended to evoke is current and urgent. “Everything I’ve thought about my life has been meaningful,” Yandas said of reading the book for the first time. “This is how I should have lived. rice field.”
Greene mentioned the final section where the performers shout “And the third revolution will swallow us all!” ――And added, “I definitely had the feeling of ‘Let’s try it!'”. Let’s go out and get started! ”
