This is Drama Masks, a Bay Area performing arts column from a born San Franciscan and longtime theatre artist in an N95 mask. I talk venue safety and dramatic substance, or the lack thereof.
Opera came up twice last week. Only one was for a good reason.
The first time was last Thursday, when we learned that SF Opera is short-changing the people who do some of the hardest work for the company. The Opera’s orchestra has been negotiating a new contract with the brass since May to no avail. Now, its union (American Federation of Musicians–Local 6) have threatened an opening-night strike. The opening gala has been pushed back, from September to November.
Of all the trends to catch on among “high art” institutions, this is one of the worst. It’s bad enough so many of them still receive funding from the tech companies trying to destroy SF (and the country, and the world), but at least some of that can be attributed to extended sponsorships signed years ago. It’s also bad that the SF Ballet dragged their feet on declining an invite to play at the badly-rebranded Kennedy Center, but they finally did it (after months of pressure). By extending labor disputes these institutions also harm themselves: In an era of outreach to younger, hipper audiences and backlash to billionaires, they only underline the difference between “us” and “them.”
None of these organizations choose to solve salary concerns by, say, cutting bonuses for their rich executives. Instead, these places that specialize in art instinctually choose to undermine the artists themselves. In the eyes of execs, the creatives are the most expendable, which is blatantly contradictory—why even bother being an arts intonation in the first place? And yes, we all know that the past year-and-a-half has seen such devasting cuts to arts funding that the only green anyone has seen has been the algae floating in the ruined Reflecting Pool. But this is the very sort of situation that shows whether your institution is one of principals or if your bold statements are just corporate slogans.
One of the biggest donors to SF arts institutions continues to be Google. If you’ve even glanced at headlines over the past week, then you know that they were first to jump on the bandwagon for the probably-not-legally-binding re-naming of Lake Ontario. That Google did this should be no surprise since they did the same thing last year with the stupid re-naming of the Gulf of Mexico. Apple Maps, briefly hailed as resisters, caved soon afterwards. The fact that these trillion-dollar companies rollover so easy for spray-tanned cry baby is pathetic. As the saying goes, “What’s the point of having ‘Fuck-you’ money if you never say ‘Fuck you’?”
Defenders of the aforementioned institutions may say that they don’t have that sort of money (anymore), but that’s actually all the more reason to take a stand. Knowing you could lose out on a great financial gain to make a statement shows that you’re serious about that statement. It’s why artists who don’t make a fraction of SF Ballet’s annual budget immediately turned down the Kennedy Center. It’s why more and more Bay Area theatre groups are eschewing traditional roles like artistic director in favor of shared leadership. It’s why several non-profits, with the choice between paying their employees fairly or cutting most of them to have a few carry the workload for less pay, chose the former–even if it meant going under.
In 2024, SF Ballet went down to the wire, but finally pulled off a contract with their dancers instead of having to cancel their annual production of The Nutcracker. Anyone who loves these institutions is hoping that SF Opera will do the same with their orchestra. Not because it makes for good press and not because the new season will bring in a lot of money. They should do it because it’s the right thing to do.
Opera Parallèle presents Expansive: Revolution is Just the Beginning
My other encounter with art last week occurred, incidentally, the same day I found about the above about SF Opera. It was a helluva week, what with the simultaneous deaths of Dolly Parton and Tim Curry within the same 24-hour span. It certainly doesn’t help that the current administration has done nearly everything in its power to erase the very concept of queerness from the American consciousness. History is repeating itself like a bad song stuck on an infinite loop.
Fortunately, there are still folks who not only remember history, but work to make sure no one else forgets it either. That’s been the driving motivation behind Opera Parallèle’s annual Expansive show, which takes place on the anniversary of the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot here in SF. The fifth installment, “Revolution is Just the Beginning,” which took place August 27 at ACT’s Strand Theatre, not only memorialize that pivotal event in queer history, it emphasized that the event itself wasn’t the end of the struggle. Things didn’t change overnight after the riot, it was just the first step in the right direction.
Mistress of Ceremonies Afrika America walked us through the hourlong recital from a trio of trans performers: mezzo Nina Jones; tenor and show producer Katherine Goforth; and baritone Sapphira Cristál (yes, of RuPaul’s Drag Race), with Keisuke Nakagoshi on piano. Their selections ran the gamut from arias from Così fan tutte to the Motown classic “Dancing in the Streets.” A projection screen on the upstage wall ran photos, diary entries, and interview quotes from the colorful folks who regularly gathered in that cafe in the Tenderloin.
Paradoxically, I found myself thinking of the show Dear San Francisco, which employed similar projection to tell the story of the city. The difference is that the latter show (at least, when I saw its first iteration five years ago) stuck to broad generalizations so as to not offend out-of-own tourists. Expansive took the opposite approach: blatantly identifying the queerness of its subjects as why they were targeted by SFPD and other bigots. That choice made all the difference.
Credit should also be given to the Strand’s HVAC, which kept CO² levels on my Aranet4 hovered around 640ppm during the entire show.
As a closer for Transgender History Month, Opera Parallèle and the Transgender District, the first of its kind in the world, didn’t merely assemble a very talented roster to show off their skills for an eager audience. It hammered home the point that we’re still fighting the same fight. It’s why Afrika America’s missives called out the SFPD for its heinous attacks during July’s Trans March: “We deserve better. This is San Francisco! The struggle is never, ever done!”
It was a beautiful, powerful message the audience needed to hear during a week that felt darker than usual for queer folk and artists alike.
