Merriam-Webster defines the word Opera as a noun— “…a drama set to music and made up of vocal pieces with orchestral accompaniment and orchestral overtures and interludes.” Merriam-Webster also defines theatre as— well, a whole lot, see here for yourself, but the one I like the best is definition 5b— Spectacle sense— 1a (dramatic or theatrical quality or effectiveness) followed by 5c— entertainment in the form of a dramatic or diverting situation or series of events. We could go down a dissertation-style rabbit hole trying to define theatre as a whole and trying to decide what makes something theatre, but isn’t that part of the joy of theatre? That it’s whatever the producing company makes it out to be? The Acme Corporation is certainly doing that with their new work, The Lights Went Out Because of a Problem: A Found Opera. Their first, in-person, live production since February of 2020, this experimental, fringe-style theatrical engagement is Directed by Lola B. Pierson and Jarod Hanson with original music composed by Allison Clendaniel and is— as I said to the director-creator at the conclusion of the performance last night— visually and aurally stunning.
The quote for me that feels most appropriate here is the one by Cesar A Cruz, “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” I honestly couldn’t tell you what I watched last night. I could try— I could literally dissect the experience of nine performers on stage, trying to count all of the literary, theatrical, cultural, off-kilter references that were interspersed throughout the performance, trying to ascribe some kind of meaning to it the way the literary scholars insist that the green light in Fitzgerald’s Gatsby had deep, intrinsic meaning. But I’m not going to do that because I would fall short of the mark and I don’t think any one person is going to have the same experience in seeing The Lights Went Out Because of a Problem: A Found Opera. Initially when the show was concluding, and at varying points throughout the performance I thought— is this the human consciousness as it slowly switches off when someone is dying? Are these the scrambled internal thoughts of someone when they are living one of those ‘near death experiences’ and their ‘life flashes before their eyes’ and instead of profound memories the way we see in cinematic dramatizations its all just a jumble of random bits of things? And then I thought— is this trying to make a statement about the way cultural representation sticks to women and what has clung through the ages verses what has fallen away— not unlike Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play by Anne Washburn? And then at several points I stopped thinking all together about the meaning and was desperately trying to recall why one line of dialogue or other was so familiar but I couldn’t quite place where I knew it from. It’s a jarring but moving and unique experience that I can say, with great certainty, I have never had at the theatre.
The Creative Team— Lola B. Pierson, serving as Co-Director, Set Designer, and Producer, alongside Kitt Crescenzo as Costume Designer, Eric Nightengale as Lighting Designer, Charles Coes as Sound Designer, Kateri Pelton as Co-Properties designer, and Jarod Hanson as Co-Director and Co-Properties Designer— have fabricated a world of everything and nothing all at once into this experience. There are lights— both on the floor in almost archeological-dig-site-museum-style setup. And there’s lighting (not to be confused with the lighting fixtures who do blink on and off rhythmically as a part of the pulse of the show as a whole) and there’s sound that is made by hand-bell-clappers and by the performers. The first two opening minutes is pure darkness and the sounds of various types of breathing. It’s very surreal. There’s a distinct lack of color in the production, with beiges and creams and muddied earth tones (a tiny hint of green towards the end) and I’m not going to attempt to figure out what sort of statement they were making with this choice but it was a noticeable one. And the physical space is laid out in such a way that you know you’re about to experience— something— even if when you leave the performance you’re still not entirely sure what that something was.
The experience itself, because it doesn’t really feel like a show but simultaneously is something more than a performance, is broken down into three acts and every word that is spoken is projected in subtitles on two screens above the play space. (There’s even text pre-show that says you’re at an opera and that’s why you’re reading the text…even though nearly all of the text is spoken in English.) For the first two acts, I would hesitate to call what happens aurally ‘music.’ It’s more composed and structured noise-scape, organized with rhythm. There is a more traditional sense of music come the third act and the performers sing in glorious harmonies that sound serenely haunting and ethereal— operatic even. Allison Clendaniel’s compositions here sound chilling and give you that ‘twilight of dreams’ sense when you hear them— or at least they did for me when I heard them.
The performers— Britt Olsen-Ecker, Molly Margulies, Jem Creutzer, Alix Fenhagen, Megan Livingston, Hailey Withrow, Meghan Stanton, Heather Morrison— are…I don’t want to say led or directed because that doesn’t feel quite right…but find their focus drawn together by Kaya Vision, who plays ‘The Tree’ and ‘Lecturer’. Watching Vision move around the stage, calling the phone-segments into play, calling the action to course, and all the other things Vision does throughout the experience, is truly fascinating. Vision has a vibrancy to their stage presence, despite simply existing through most of the cacophony as it occurs.
There are profound quotes that get peppered throughout the experience— some wildly recognizable and others obscure— and they land differently for each person in the audience. Ones that spoke to me (and mercy help me because I couldn’t tell you which performer said what…at times all eight of them were speaking at once and the text was flashing so fast on the subtitle screen that it was just a living dervish bordering on hurricane) were ones that reminded me of things I’d read or done or were little bits of my nostalgic childhood. They quote, off-rhythm, the opening lines of the “Ducktales” theme-song. There’s a quote from my favorite childhood book, The Phantom Tollbooth. And a whole lot of other bits and bobs— including the opening to and closing from Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, which serves as an ephemeral skeletal framework for the experience.
Britt Olsen-Ecker, Molly Margulies, Jem Creutzer, Alix Fenhagen, Megan Livingston, Hailey Withrow, Meghan Stanton, Heather Morrison work tirelessly in the play space to create this experience. There’s gesture work, there’s recitation, there’s emotion and expression. It’s hard to pick out exactly who does what in a performance like this but each of them had moments where they were shining like twinkling bulbs in a strand of a larger, brighter, conflagration of light.
Not something I understood but it was certainly something I’ll be thinking about for quite some time as I try to marvel over what I took away from it and why. Baltimore’s edgiest piece of theatre at the moment, or most uniquely spun opera, whichever word you’d like to use to describe— The Lights Went Out Because of a Problem: A Found Opera is truly an experience like no other.
Running Time: Approximately 60 minutes with no intermission
The Lights Went Out Because of a Problem: A Found Opera plays through December 17th 2023 with The Acme Corporation, currently in residence at The Voxel— 9 W. 25th Street in Baltimore, MD. Tickets can be purchased at the door or in advance online.
Please note- MASKS ARE REQUIRED FOR THE DURATION OF THE PERFORMANCE (the theatre has provided them if you are do not have one.)
