By Jenna Tamisiea
At first, I was flabbergasted. How could my best friend skip out on celebrating Valentine’s Day? He and his boyfriend had recently said those “three little words” to each other.
“There’s no hiding when you’re at a restaurant together on V-Day,” he says to me, a tight frown forming at the corners of his mouth. “It outs us.”
As his words hit me, I had one of those mortifying moments when I’m painfully aware of my privilege. I had the advantage of forgetting I lived in the Deep South. Even seemly progressive people here in South Carolina can view gay love as something vastly foreign—something that encroaches upon or confuses their holiday.
Stories like this one from my friend inspired me to co-found a performing arts company that provides a megaphone for the marginalized individuals in my community. In 2009, with $700 from my savings, I started Glow Lyric Theatre. For seven years, we’ve produced opera, operetta, and musical theatre in direct response to the social and political climate of South Carolina. I work hard each season to re-imagine existing works in a way that celebrates diversity and promotes empathy for different perspectives.
My friend’s fear of going out on Valentine’s Day gnawed at me. At the very least, I could use my platform with Glow to provide a safe, judgment free date zone on February 14. I felt pulled towards creating new work featuring personal stories like that of my friend. I booked a venue for the evening of Valentine’s Day, and asked 10 LGBTQ singers, actors, dancers, poets, and artists from the community to help me jump–start the project. We all gathered together. Unsure of how to start, I asked everyone what message they wanted the piece to convey. At this question, the room bubbled over with stories of young love, first times, heartbreak, and the loss of love. Their vulnerability reminded me that the feelings and situations surrounding love are shared human experiences. The actors wanted to explore these similarities, while also bringing to light the unique challenges of love and relationships faced by the LGBTQ community. The hope was to connect the audience with the actors through these shared stories and examine the power of love to fight oppression.
For three weeks, the ensemble of singers gathered and created material for the production, which we decided would be a mosaic of song, spoken word, and dance. Our rehearsals were a melting pot of personal discussion, political debates, breakthroughs, bad ideas, script changes, tears, and group hugs. I spent hours collecting these ideas, patching them together, experimenting with transition material, and brainstorming with the cast, refining it up until the very last dress rehearsal.
On February 14, 2017, Glow Lyric Theatre presented Love is Love is Love. The “Habañera” from Bizet’s Carmen soared over a stand-up comedy routine by a woman describing how she lost her virginity to her female friend. A baritone sang “Ich bin der Welt Abhanden Gekommen,” relaying his quiet resolve to be at peace with his identity as a gay black man. The whole cast filled our ears with humorous and heartbreaking hashtags, illuminating the power words have to harm and heal.
Love is Love is Love made history in our southern community by featuring the first transgender actors to grace the stage of Greenville, South Carolina. At the post–show talk back, I couldn’t help but beam when an older woman cried out, “How can I help make things better?” Upstate Pride, our local pride organization and partner, put together a lovely reception where I witnessed a child eating her weight in rainbow cookies and absent–mindedly singing a melody she picked up from the show.
In the lobby, a man confessed that his friend had dragged him to the production, and that he was initially uncomfortable with the idea. He referenced a French art song our soprano sang. She paired the song with a monologue about her first heartbreak. The woman she loved could not come out to her family or friends, and their relationship ended harshly. The man squeezed my hand. Fighting back tears, he said, “When that young woman sang about her girlfriend…that’s how I felt when my wife died.” It was an extraordinary moment in my artistic career to witness first hand the power of opera to touch a heart in unexpected ways.
As the last patron left, I reveled in a post-show high. I wondered if Verdi felt this way when he composed Nabucco, or if Mozart felt he’d made a difference with The Marriage of Figaro. Opera is an art form that’s over 400 years old and, as the above examples prove, has historically told stories of the fight for social justice and equality. It is unfortunate that the operatic cannon is still so desperately devoid of LGBTQ–focused works. While there have been active efforts to diversify the film and theatre industry, opera has avoided the outrage and debates. I worry this is because most view opera as perpetually elitist and irrelevant. I mean, when blackface continues to be a common occurrence in opera, one can see why it gets a bad rap. Fear seems to be the main reason why the largest and most influential opera companies in the U.S. don’t engage in more diverse work. They fear losing older audiences and endowments by thrusting their work into political debates. But how can these companies that continually produce works centering on white, heterosexual, and cisgender stories ever hope to attract new, diverse, and young audiences?
In any fight for social justice, where can we look for change? The answer is to the little guys. It’s the small, indie opera companies like LoftOpera in NYC, Urban Arias in D.C., and LOLA in Austin that program new operas and reconstruct old works to reflect the diversity of their communities. If a small company in the South like Glow Lyric Theatre finds a way to produce relevant work and receive support for it, it’s proof that the operatic landscape is changing. Yes, there are challenges producing LGBTQ works in the South. Some of Glow’s patrons have stopped supporting us because they are homophobic. I’ve hired out–of-state opera singers who don’t always feel welcome or safe in South Carolina. My best friend can’t enjoy a Valentine’s Day dinner with his boyfriend without feeling marginalized. But what Love is Love is Love did for me was strengthen the hope I carried for my community. It revealed to me the healing power of the arts, and how people are much more willing to listen when provided with the opportunity to hear someone’s story through song. In these divisive times, the music unites us.
