Roumain and Joseph’s We Shall Not Be Moved
New York Premiere
Apollo Theater
October 7, 2017
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| Opera Philadelphia's highly topical opera at the Apollo Theater in Harlem Photo credit: Opera Philadelphia |
Composer Daniel Bernard Roumain and librettist Marc
Bamuthi Joseph enlisted the collaboration of a group of high school
students, who participated in Art Sanctuary’s Hip H’opera public outreach
program, to assemble a timely story about justice and inequality in
Philadelphia. Picking up where Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me
leaves off, We Shall Not Be Moved is a new “opera” commissioned and
co-produced by the Apollo Theater, Opera Philadelphia and Hackney Empire that
delves dramatically into the politics of living in certain bodies, especially
black and brown, but also transgendered bodies.
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| John Little, John Blue, John Mack, Un/Sung, and John Henry Photo credit: Dominic M. Mercier for Opera Philadelphia |
We Shall Not Be Moved
is the story of five dynamic teenagers who live in present day Philadelphia
where they have recently begun attending a new high school because their
previous one fell victim to the city’s 2013 budget cuts. True story. One
morning while cutting school they have a run in that leads inadvertently to
murder. Rather than stick around to face the consequences, they decide to
runaway and form a “Family,” as they call themselves. They end up squatting in
an abandoned row house on the West side of town.
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| The Family on the run and in search of a new home Photo credit: Opera Philadelphia |
It doesn’t take long for a hardworking Latina female police
officer with a heart of gold, who dutifully works the beat in the neighborhood,
to become aware of their presence. But they also attract the attention of
another “family” who already lives in their new temporary home. They are the
ghosts of the people, often referred as OGs (or “original gangsters”), who lost
their lives in a tragic fire caused by a police raid on the block years prior.
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| The other "family" of Osage Ave in West Philly. MOVE headquarters in the background |
Our motley crew of young people on the run just happened to
stumble upon one of the darker chapters in the city’s history. Back in the
1980s the block was ground zero for the MOVE organization that was cruelly
treated with an all-too-familiar brand of lawlessness by local law enforcement.
“No justice in Philadelphia, not just in Philadelphia,” goes the refrain in one
of the more empowering musical numbers.
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| The 1985 blaze on Osage Avenue Photo credit: Philly Mag |
Matt Saunders’s set design
consisted of half a dozen moving translucent panels shaped like the familiar
facades of row houses, not unlike the ones that the police fire bombed in West
Philly back in May 1985 when they went to rout the intransigent radical
community of black liberation activists known as MOVE. The blaze destroyed 61
homes, displaced 250 residents, and took 11 casualties, including five
children.
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| A melancholic Un/Sung against the row house set design Photo credit: Opera Philadelphia |
Unbeknownst to the young gang of runaways, they have sought refuge
in the home that now stands on the site of the former MOVE headquarters. The
site is still inhabited by the ghosts of the OGs who died there some 32 years
prior. Rather than haunting the new inhabitants, the ghosts inspire them with
cryptic words of wisdom.
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| John Blue and crew on the lam Photo credit: Opera Philadelphia |
When the policewoman decides to make a house call on the crew
knowing they should probably be in school, she quickly finds herself in over
her head and on her own. In the heat of the moment, she overreacts and
mistakenly fires her gun, leaving one of the youths gravely wounded. The
accident represents both another instance of senseless police brutally and a
cosmic coincidence of sorts. The victim of the murder that sent the Family into
hiding in the first place just happens to be the cop’s younger brother. The
course of events also represents the kind of messy retribution through
questionable divine intervention familiar from the greatest of Greek tragedies.
But the equation isn’t so simple. The officer is not in only shock from her
unintended action, but she is also outnumbered. The rest of Family assails her.
They take her gun and use it to take her hostage.
In the opening of Act II, John Henry, sung by street-smart
bass-baritone Aubrey Allicock, lays bleeding in a pool of his own blood.
Projections by Jorge Cousineau enlivened the sets of these inner city
American streets with a variety of video and animation approaches, including
the stunning effects he employs to give Henry an out-of-body experience. The
scene opens a musical window into his soul, during which time he sings an
“aria” of sorts, rap ballad-style. He stands up and spits his rhymes, while a
projected image of his body remains on the ground. It was one of the moments in
the show when time literally stood still and it was pretty powerful.
The tempos and volumes increase in the midst of John Henry’s near
death experience. “Black body gone too soon,” the chorus of onlookers intones.
The most intense, panic-filled music of the evening punctuated this moment in
the drama for the rest of the crew, yet John Henry’s soul exuded a certain
peace. “Lay me down,” he croons.
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| John Henry struggles through a near death experience Photo credit: Opera Philadelphia |
Roumain’s score sets Joseph’s libretto aflame with a variety of
musical genres and singing styles. Hip-hop, R&B, classic soul, funk, and
slam poetry collide with baroque, classical and Broadway-style musical theater
modes of storytelling in what is being billed as a new “opera.” Calling this
piece an opera is a generous appellation, but it is also cause to rejoice if
the term is capacious enough to encapsulate such an eclectic hybrid.
Roumain, whose score pulls some seriously dirty funk bow work out
of a small string section, expands the range of operatic language to include
electronic synthesizers, a drum kit, electric guitar and bass. The use of
amplification and microphones for the singers is perhaps the greatest departure
for an opera setting. Nevertheless, a palpable street energy exudes from the
pit with passages of breakdance syncopation, foot-stomping tribal beats, and
pop-music structures, featuring refrains, rife with da capo repetitions,
remix-style.
The classic operatic practice of relegating dialogue to
recitatives gets swapped out for a sort of narration delivered by Un/Sung,
a spoken word artist with a spirit that electrifies. In the midst of all of
these contemporary musical idioms, the texture of the score also occasionally
breaks into opera.
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| Officer Glenda is taken hostage after the fatal shot is fired Photo credit: Opera Philadelphia |
One of the particularly inventive crossover concepts was the
repeated use of countertenor John Holiday as the kind of soulful
falsetto often heard singing backup vocals on a rap ballad, harmonizing with
the beat before breaking out into some kind of a solo that adds flourishes of
color to a track. Having made his name as a god of the Baroque
countertenor/castrato repertory, Holiday has a voice that is clean and pure. He
had some of the most striking musical numbers of the evening, lending his
angelic instrument to Michael Jackson-style soulful falsetto lines that were
less operatic than R&B.
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| John Blue searches for answers to pervasive body questions Photo credit: Opera Philadelphia |
Holiday played John Blue, a transgender man whose frustrations
over the trials and tribulations of his racial identity are further burdened by
the fluidity of gender he has lived with all his life. Assigned a woman at
birth, he longs to change the body he was given. As in the long tradition of
operatic gender bending, Holiday is a male singer in the role of a woman who
identifies as a man. In one of the projections we see him in the body wrap he
wears to mask his femininity. “Blackbird sing, blackbird fly.” So the opera
takes on an even broader array of questions about bodies than even Coates
allowed for in his influential book. John Blue’s moving plight dramatizes what you
get when you find race and the gender predicaments all rolled up in the
struggle of one courageous individual.
The texture of vocal writing for Glenda, the Latina policewoman,
was slightly different. Mezzo-soprano Kirstin Chávez sang the soulful
Latin-flavored role with a bluesy gusto. She gave her portrayal something of
the female strength and conviction one finds in the exotic rhythms of Bizet’s Carmen,
which we have also heard Chávez sing.
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| A police officer with a heart of gold Photo credit: Opera Philadelphia |
Glenda stands her ground as a dedicated law enforcement officer
who is dead set on social respectability in her aspirations toward
old-fashioned social mobility. Unfortunately, I found the musical writing for
more purely operatic voices like hers to be the weakest. Nevertheless, the
libretto goes to great lengths to humanize even the cops. Despite its overall
diagnosis of systemic social injustice for people born into certain bodies, the
police officer is given a dignified portrayal. The opera demands that we
understand that officers of the law are just people too. Like all people, they
have feelings and families and backstories and dreams of their own. Like all
people they can make mistakes too. It’s only human, regardless of race, gender,
gender, sexual orientation.
After John Henry’s victim-of-police-violence subplot runs its
course, the ongoing narration of Officer Glenda’s story brings the opera to its
true emotional and dramatic climax. Tied to a chair and held at gunpoint, she
remains their hostage. The youngsters have to decide how they are going to handle
their hostage situation. “Where is the fire gonna start again?” they ask
rhetorically. “Here is where the fire is gonna start again.” The opera is
punctuated by a series of almost infuriating moments that rouse a sense of
indignation at the injustice of the world, stirs up anger, kindles frustration.
It generated enough tension to keep me on the edge of my seat right up to the
end.
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| Un/Sung speaks her mind: "God bless my brothers and me" Photo credit: Opera Philadelphia |
Un/Sung lectures her prisoner on the ways of the world. “The one
holding the gun / determines the future of everyone,” she tauntingly rhymes.
Though it sounds like a trite commonplace, her point packs a punch. She knows
that power lies on the side of those who have a monopoly on violence – it’s
political philosophy straight out of the pages of Carl Schmitt.
Their exchange leads to an incredibly human scene in which they
finally recognize how much they actually have in common. “Just trying to stay
alive,” raps Un/Sung. “So am I,” retorts Glenda humbly. To which Un/Sung
responds, having broken away from her spoken word delivery style, now singing
like songbird in full cry: “God bless my brothers and me!”
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| The action climaxes. Ghosts of OGs look on. Photo credit: Opera Philadelphia |
Her voice drops to graver tones, as she lifts the gun towards
Glenda’s head to finally introduce herself by her birth name: “My name is
Alicia. But you can call me Un/Sung!” She is at point blank range. The tension
between them has reached fever pitch. Just as the gun is about to go pop, the
lights flip dramatically to black. My heart jumped in my chest. The whole thing
left me tingling.
“What is freedom?” the WRBG radio broadcaster muses at one point
in the voice over that is featured at intervals over the course of the opera.
“Swimming in the creek behind the house as a kid. Dancing. Listening to music,”
are among the answers. We suddenly realize that the whole debacle has been
recounted in flashback from the perspective of the police officer, who walked
away from the whole affair alive.
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| The ghosts in the box: A housing block rich with history Photo credit: Opera Philadelphia |
The suggestion is that after the lights go out, a secret pact is
made. They agree to let house burn. But did the kids burn in it? That’s the
official story. But apparently, they got away and the police officer lives to
tell the story and it’s a hot lead on the radio. “Cop tells all, live on WRBG.”
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| The aftermath of the blaze on a more ideological Osage Avenue Photo credit: Philly Mag |
“Was the Family motivated by big ideas, ideologies? Robespierre,
the desire to live outside society, to establish some kind of external rule?”
inquires the radio host. Speculation is made that these kids may have been
inspired by the memory of the MOVE organization from the 1970s and 80s. Which,
aside from their incidental supernatural contact with the ghostlike residue of
the movement, obviously wasn’t the case. But the DJ’s inclination to make such
a connection and credit them for revolutionary sophistication is a commentary
in and of itself on how we come to understand the accidents of history.
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| Law enforcement cleans up after their own lawless catastrophe Photo credit: Philly Mag |
Though by no means a perfect experiment in contemporary opera, We
Shall Not Be Moved provides ample fodder for reflection on a variety of
questions related to race, gender, police violence, and social justice that are
topical everywhere you look in our culture today. It was both stimulating on a
human level and emotionally gripping. I found myself provoked, moved and
profoundly frustrated. An evening at the theater is rarely able to achieve as
much.
– Lui & Lei
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| Daniel Bernard Roumain (composer), Bill T. Jones (director) and Marc Balmuthi Joseph (librettist) |
