The cast and creators of the New Works Collective following a December workshop performance. Photo by Macy White/OTSL.
Soon, three new world premiere operas will make their way to the stage at COCA’s Catherine B. Berges Theatre. A panel of local residents selected the trio of 20-minute operas—Cook Shack by Del’Shawn Taylor and Samiya Bashir, Slanted: An American Rock Opera by Simon Tam and Joe X. Jiang, and Madison Lodge by Tre’von Griffith—from among hundreds of applications as part of Opera Theatre of Saint Louis’ inaugural New Works Collective. They’ve since been guided by members of the OTSL creative team and community consultant/stage director Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj, and now they’re nearly ready for their world premieres. These three works, which deal with such topics as female empowerment, Black queer joy, and freedom of speech, are the first results of a creative endeavor that will run through 2025. As the artists gathered for rehearsals ahead of the March 16–18 performances, we caught up with OTSL general director Andrew Jorgensen to discuss this artistic experiment and the works that have come from it.
How did the New Works Collective get started?
In the summer of 2021, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which has been a longtime partner and supporter of the company, reached out to a number of their grantees and said something to the effect of, “We want you to propose programs that in some way sort of challenge the status quo of the business, centering equity challenges and challenging this status quo of how the business has worked” It’s not often that a funder issues a call like that. And it came at a great time for us. We had just come through our parking lot season, so everything was on the table for us, and everything was being thought about differently. We were in a crisis of social and racial justice in this country and in the pandemic. It was a year where we had been called to think about really big questions and about our place in the community and our place in service to St. Louis. We had started a strategic planning process in the winter of 2020, just weeks before the pandemic, and we put that process on hold when the pandemic started and used the year and a half that we were working from home to go on what we called our listening journey. We spoke to literally hundreds of people across the St. Louis community about what our role is and how we can better serve St. Louis. On the far side of that listening journey, we authored a strategic plan that is so different and so much more powerful than what we would have authored if we had not had to go through the challenges of 2020 and 2021. Anyway, all of that's to say that we were primed for this challenge from the Mellon Foundation. We got to talking about commissioning, and what we realized is that, even when we had brought new creators to our table, that the fundamental power of selection stayed with the company, the artistic director, the general director, the artistic leadership…We were the ones deciding who we would invite in and vetting the stories that they would tell. We weren't trying to hog the power, but that's a reality. And so we thought, Well, what if, rather than talking about community advisory and community collaboration, we really invited members of our community to take ownership in decision making? That would be an experiment that rises to the level of what the Mellon Foundation is challenging us to do. And so that was the beginning of this idea of the New Works Collective, assembling this group of St. Louisans from all different parts of the community.
Tell me about how this group of community members functioned.
That group issued this call for stories and for creators, and that group is the ones who took us through a process and decided who would be the creators, what stories they would tell. The creators in most cases brought those stories with them, but the members of the collective were the ones who decided it. And then the premise was that we, the opera company that has nurtured so many new works, that our expertise could be applied to these stories that were authentically community selected, and that we would be able to take them forward across a curation process and bring them to the stage. And that's what we will do for the first time in two weeks. Insofar as I know, it's the first time in the opera world that anybody has really partnered with the community and given that authority to the community in this way. And so I think it does push this model forward about how we can be more responsible and responsive and representative of the communities that we are part of. And that really does push the future of this art form forward in a way that's exciting, because these are composers and storytellers and stories that would not have been on our stage otherwise, and I think it's a great thing that they are.
What did you learn working with this first cohort of residents?
It was incredibly exciting and challenging, and an incredibly rewarding process. First of all, the members of the collective dedicated amazing insight, amazing commitment to this art form and to this company, and to this community and to the people in it. So just extraordinary gratitude, I think is the place where I would start for the members of the collective, who in some cases didn't know Opera Theatre all that well and who have really dedicated an extraordinary amount of work to helping us issue this call, screen more than a hundred applications, and then help us to come up with the three teams that would come to the stage. I'll be the first to admit, as the director of the company, that wasn't always easy. My colleagues and I were used to making the decisions, so making room and intentionally clearing the space so that somebody else would be making these decisions, was an incredibly meaningful experience for us to undertake. It really invited us to just consider a lot about the way an opera company works and some of the uninterrogated practices of the opera company and how we can think differently as we go forward.
From this process have come three very different stories. Tell me a little about these works and the creative team that you've gotten to work with.
I think one of the brilliant things that the collective has done is put together this wonderfully eclectic and diverse range of stories and operas that will come to our stage. That's about the backgrounds of the creators, that's about the stories that they are telling, and that's about the actual music that they are bringing. We have a rock opera here. We have something that's a little bit closer to traditional classical music. And we have something that's very influenced by jazz and blues. In all cases though, the commitment was to the highest quality work that we can muster and really inviting the creators to express themselves and their stories. A critical member of this team, in addition to the creators themselves, has been Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj, who is the stage director and the community consultant. He has been such a partner in working with my team and with the creators…it's been an amazing team effort. These are incredibly accomplished artists, but all of them new to opera storytelling. And so inviting them in and going on this journey with them and supporting their journey to the opera stage has been a thrill and a privilege.
Creator Simon Tam in conversation with director Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj. Photo by Macy White/OTSL.
I got the chance to chat with Rajendra a few weeks ago, and it’s really interesting that he’s been able to take on three very different stories and help creatively guide them in this way.
As different as they are, in each there is a moment about identity, self-discovery, and being seen by the community around you or by yourself. And so I think he has helped us to find a through line that is very meaningful, and that really elevates this from each individual story to some beautiful and powerful and universal ideas about representation, identity, and being seen. And, and I think that will be very powerful and very beautiful when we come to the theater and to the stage.
What are you most looking forward to as these works make their way to audiences?
One of the things I love about my job is commissioning new operas and being present when an audience hears new work for the first time. I think all the time about the great moments of firsts, these pieces that we hear as history. The first time Fire Shut Up My Bones was performed was my first year at Opera Theatre, and we felt in that moment that this was something incredibly special that we had been part of, and I can't wait for that moment when these works are shared with the audience and the audience can experience it, because really an opera isn't done until the audience is there to share it with us. The audience is that last part of what makes this special, because it's coming together in a community and sharing this music with the community that actually gives life to these works and takes them from the page and puts them across the orchestra pit and puts them into our minds and into our hearts. And I acknowledge that's a little bit of a lofty statement, but it's a privilege to be part of those moments. I think what makes this so special is that each of these three works, in its own way, really is something unique and something that no one's done before. So to be present as our audience experiences this new frontier of opera in different ways, that's very exciting.
Librettist Samiya Bashir watches a rehearsal of her opera, "Cook Shack." Photo by Macy White/OTSL.
What would you like audiences to know about this group of works or about this program as a whole?
I think a couple of things. Primarily that this will be a joyous, entertaining, musically and artistically satisfying evening. I think it's easy to get wrapped up in the program and how it worked and how we got there and the process. But at the end of the day, these are three world premieres, three new works that we're going to share, and it's going to be a joyous and fun experience. I want people to take a risk and to come and see it and to participate with us, because I believe that it will be wonderful to be part of it. The second thing I think, wearing my hat as the general director of this company, is that our mission is to foster a vibrant future for this art form. And so I think there's nothing more mission-driven that we could be doing than inviting these creators and helping to support their work and their process with exciting and emerging young singers. That is the heart of what we do at Opera Theatre, and it's the heart of advancing this art form and of fostering a vibrant future for opera.
It sounds like it will be a really exciting start to the OTSL season.
This is the time of year when people start to think about Opera Theatre and the season coming up, and so as I think about our vision, we want to make more noise in more of St. Louis during more of the year. So in adding these three works to our season, we get to broaden and do more and invite more people in and tell more stories and create more excitement. And that's a wonderful thing to be part of.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with folks about these works?
You know, these are 20-minute-long works, and so even with three of them it's still a relatively brief evening mm-hmm. So if people have stereotypes or perceptions about long nights at the opera, my hope is that this will challenge some of those stereotypes as well. I think the real last thought to leave you with is something I've already said. This is going to be exciting, it's going to be wonderful, it's going to be entertaining and thought-provoking. These creators have written beautiful and meaningful works, and we just can't wait to share them. We look forward to welcoming people to the theater for these performances coming up in just a few weeks.
