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All operas contain some resonance for a contemporary audience, or no one would bother to perform them—or, in fact, to have written them in the first place. The classic operatic themes—love, loss, power struggles, comic human weakness—are rendered larger than life, true, but nevertheless touch us all. But few operas contribute as much to today’s cultural conversation as George Gershwin’s 1934 Porgy & Bess, running at Seattle Opera through Aug. 25. The opera’s story centers on hot-button issues of race and gender, and abuse of both people and substances; the opera itself, a tale of blacks told by whites (Gershwin and librettist DuBose Heyward), raises questions of cultural appropriation. We asked ChrisTiana ObeySumner, whose tenure as Seattle Opera’s social impact consultant is winding down, to share their thoughts about last Wednesday’s performance.

Part two of this conversation continues later this week on seattlemag.com

So, what did you think?

I’ll give you a little context. When I go and do observations like this, I bring a colleague who has a social-anthropology background, especially around African diaspora cultures and customs. Usually because of that he is very critical of the opera, and a lot of it was just seeing him react. There’s two things going on for me in this opera. On one hand, there’s a lot of things I can nitpick with it. As a disabled black woman myself, I wish [the actor playing] Porgy was disabled. I’ve spoken with [Seattle] Opera about plans to reach out to the disabled community once their new [civic headquarters and community space, Seattle Opera at the Center] is open. We talk about color-conscious casting vs. color-blind casting, but we also have to talk about the intersectionality of what Porgy was. I would have loved to see that played by someone who has that lived experience.

I think that there were certain parts of it [where] I was concerned that the operagoer in the dominant cultural society may not have picked up on the nuances of what was being done in that opera. Maybe only someone who was black or has a close proximity to the black community would get it.

Any specific examples?

I think there’s a lot around the religiosity, and what that means. I see Bess’s relationship with Crown as domestic violence. It’s a domestic-abuse relationship, and she’s trying to find another way to live her life in love. There’s this feeling of impostor syndrome, this feeling of learned helplessness where you have this abuse mindset, this justification that you fall into. I see a lot of the toxic masculinity that does happen in patriarchal culture in general, but we talk about that in black culture. I think that the way the community interacted with Porgy as a disabled person—I’ve experienced almost the exact same statements said to me, especially when I was more visibly disabled.

All of that said: It was amazing to sit in an A-class opera house in Seattle and see something that was full of black excellence. The cast that I saw last night was astounding, Angel Blue [who sang the role of Bess] was astounding. It was a very emotional experience. Going to the opera as a black person, it’s really difficult sometimes to see yourself onstage—to see your community, your customs, your norms. To have that experience for some-odd three hours, to see this and to be in that space—it was a magical moment. And I felt so much pride for the opera, for the performers, for the stage director and crew… for the history of blackness in America, the Gullah/Geechee [descendants of enslaved West and Central Africans] culture.

I strongly hope than when people saw this, they didn’t just get caught up in the magnificence of it, and I think that’s what I loved about the stage design—it was very simple, they were living in a simple space. There was nothing flashy to detract from the story; there was no glitter falling from the sky…

Which Seattle Opera likes to do.

There was no fancy laser show. There was just plain backdrops and it was gorgeous.

When you’re talking about these aspects of the opera—toxic masculinity, the domestic-abuse relationship—would you call this staging in some way an “accurate” representation of those aspects?

It’s a difficult question because this is going to look different for a lot of people. I think that if you look at this on a continuum, I think they captured a good centrist view. I think there’s definitely a lot of room for it to have been more extreme… Doing art there’s a fine line between tasteful representation and gaudy shock value. This person [Bess] was in a domestic-abuse relationship, being controlled by substance abuse and addiction, being forced into nonconsensual relationships, essentially being a social pariah. And the misogynoir of that Jezebel archetype—this person is just a promiscuous slut, to use a harsh term.

If there was some sort of exit interview that we could have done, especially women, especially women of color, and especially black women, and we asked if in their primary relationship they had experienced any of those themes onstage, I’m pretty sure a great number of them would say yes. So I think that’s the point, to get that point across that this is something that happens—not happened, but happens. And I know that [Seattle] Opera, their focus at this time is to put art onstage that isn’t about passive consumption. Their intention is not to make an opera that has a pretty stage and nice music and makes everyone feel warm and fuzzy inside. Their intention in a lot of ways is to be provocateurs—to put something onstage that people have to grapple with, to process it, [to be] haunted by it—to say “What was that? What’s going on in my community, what is my impact in this? Am I seeing this and disregarding it?” And I felt like Porgy and Bess did that—and I hope did that for communities in the dominant cultural society.

And the takeaway for the audience?

I would say: Go see it. But don’t just “go see it.” I would want someone, first, to prepare to see it. Read the panels [the informational displays in the lobby]. Take mental notes of some of the themes that were brought up in the opera. And then take the time to go home and do some of the following: Read up about those dynamics. Read up about those events. Listen to people of color and black folks when they’re talking about some of those dynamics still happening here—and don’t minimize it. Don’t dismiss it, and don’t see it from an individualistic standpoint, see it from a collectivist standpoint. Think about the overall message—the fact that they were in poverty, they had to work excessively hard for the little bit that they had. That they were being in a lot of ways harassed by the police—and that’s happening now. The difficulties of even burying their dead—something I personally experienced with my grandmother; we didn’t have the money to bury her.

Think about income inequality, think about wealth inequality, think about the displacement happening in the CD right and the South End. Think about the standard of housing that people are living in. Think about our criminal punishment system and how this is affecting folks. Think about the survival techniques—someone like Sportin’ Life is selling “happy dust” perhaps not because he’s a bad guy, but because that’s how he knows how to make a living. Think about some of these things, and decenter the desire to see this as just another pretty production, because it’s so much more than that. There are so many messages and themes in it that are applicable right now, today.

Bring all of that into this production when you see it, and when you’re thinking and talking about it and processing it. And I think it’s overwhelming. We as post-Enlightenment humans in the neoliberal society of Seattle want to say “This isn’t really applicable to us.” Au contraire. It’s extremely applicable. We are the very people in this community to have to think about these themes, and understand what our continued impact and collusion in these systems of oppression are.

Photo courtesy of christianaobeysumner.com