This isn’t an admonishment to those upset with the
election, it’s the title of a new “opera” by two faculty members at the Eastman
School of Music: Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon. A friend of a friend asked me to go, and then I read an
article about its creators in the Rochester City Newspaper that almost brought
me to tears. Rochester had the world premiere of this multi-media opera this
week, and the Mexican premiere will be next week; the work was written
by two Mexican musicians in Rochester, and was partially funded by Mexico’s
legislature and cultural administration. That would be exciting in a normal time, but given the hostility of
our President-Elect to our neighbor to the south, it resonated even more deeply.
My original hook for attending was that I’d never seen
PUSH Physical Theatre perform, and this was the perfect opportunity. PUSH is an
international touring company that was founded here in Rochester in 2000. I can
honestly say that I had no idea what to expect, and I was astonished. It’s a
shame that this was a one-time performance here, because it was very moving. The costumes and movement were incredibly creative. Jeff
Spevak wrote a fantastic review in the D&C, which is worth checking out
just for the photos, which of course I wasn’t allowed to take!
The article in the City News talks about Darren
Stevenson, the artistic director of PUSH, learning, in Estonia, about “the
Baltic Chain, a peaceful protest in 1989, in which people from three different
Baltic states… joined hands, forming a human chain that stretched more than 400
miles in solidarity against the political control of the Soviet Union.” He was
impressed by the power of simply reaching out to people different from oneself
to overcome our societal fears. It made me wonder if, in our country’s time of
crisis, can love really trump hate (and trump Trump)? Instead of posting false
news or unrealistic petitions on Facebook and Twitter, could we build our own
human chain here in the states, to stand together, peacefully, to demand that
we treat each other with respect whatever our gender or sexual preference or
ethnicity or religion or other categories people use to divide into ‘us’ vs.
‘other’? To demand that our press remain free, and that our freedoms be
protected?Stevenson introduced the piece, which is about the creative act and the terror of the empty page, and explained that it was a true collaboration among the creators, who all worked closely together, sending emails and video clips back and forth. He repeated multiple times that they “didn’t intend it to be political,” but that it inherently did make a political statement – that “it’s hard to build walls when you’re holding hands.”
I can’t believe I never saw Push at Fringe, but I’m
looking forward to their upcoming Rochester performances next spring (May 6 and
June 9-11 were advertised in the program but are not yet listed on their
website).
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