Imaginary Audience

I recently had an interesting exchange with a fellow critic about the term “genre-fluid,” which they felt had become a kind of marketing doublespeak. 

I, personally, like “genre-fluid” because of the way that it, intentionally or not, implicates queerness, as well as transness.

But this critic felt this was precisely the issue. It implicates without full engagement or responsibility.

While I’m loath to fully agree, I did see their point at “Opera Evolved: Genre Fluidity” — a collaboration between National Sawdust and the Metropolitan Opera — on Thursday, Feb. 22.

This talk included previews of Sawdust founder Paola Prestini’s AI-inspired Sensorium Ex and the Met’s production of John Adams’ El Niño.

In it, soprano Hailey McAvoy talked about having cerebral palsy. And bass-baritone Davóne Tines discussed his jazz and gospel background. 

While the talk invoked both race and disability, it, notably, didn’t even touch upon queerness (see comment below). And this wasn’t my only issue with the title.

Not to sound pedantic, but the word “evolution,” in the Darwinian sense, suggests improvement. When it comes to opera, contemporary is not necessarily “better” than classic. Just different.

National Sawdust did a better job of representing “genre fluidity” with Natti Vogel’s “All-Star Orchestra” back in December. Or, more recently, Jodie Landau’s “Performance of Self,” presented by Beth Morrison Projects, on Friday, March 15.

Before Landau even comes onstage, the audience is met with a mirror. It reflects the six-piece band that is gradually assembling pre-show. Reminiscent of a practice room.

“Why do you care so much about gender?” Landau quotes his mother once asking (on the way to get bagels, of all things). “Performance of Self” attempts an answer.

In it, Judith Butler, the coiner of “gender performativity,” is never named, but often invoked, like a deity.

Landau perhaps best known as a percussionist with Wild Up. But he is also a singer and composer. With a unique, difficult-to-describe, multi-octave voice.

“Performance of Self” might be described chamber-rock-musical-cabaret. Especially catchy was the song “Are you attracted to me?” with polka-like band punctuations.

Throughout, drummer Matt Evans supplied the heartbeat. As well as the occasional ba dum tss. Bass clarinetist Eileen Mack provided depth. With violin screams, and tear-inducing swells, by Darian Donovan Thomas.

But in this show full of instrumental color, clothes are just as important actors. Landau’s lipstick-print boxers, his grandmother’s suit, his canary-yellow dress.

“I’m a little gay, but maybe so are you,” sang Landau through a vocoder, sounding like Bon Iver meets Laurie Anderson.

But the climax was a recreation of a home video of the seven-year-old, Backstreet Boys-obsessed Landau singing “Am I sexual?” with total abandon.

What I found so moving about “Performance of Self” was that it contained real-time self-reflection. Messy, ugly, raw, sincere. Like a childhood tantrum.

“It would be easier if I were queerer,” sings Landau. “Never enough, always too much.”

We never really get an answer to how Landau identifies. He doesn’t owe us that. What we are left with is that “queering” is a thing you do. Kind of like “musicking.”

Which relates to the debate that opened this review. Maybe our working definition of queerness needs expanding.

Because the subversion of genre is another kind of “queering,” which is not irrespective of, but also not totally dependent on, the person doing it.

Photos by Maria Baranova