Tell us a bit about yourselves.<\/strong><\/p>\n
“Better Strangers started with Clouds and Jessie, two queer
feminist geeks. We met through LARP and bonded over a mutual love
of opera, together with frustration at the lack of available jobs.
Clouds is now in her second year of a singing course at music
school. Jessie is a youth worker at the East London Out Project<\/a>, and
does freelance community arts with people with profound and
multiple learning disabilities. We both have literature degrees.
Jessie likes queer theory and graphic novels. Clouds likes metal
and baking. Pleased to meet you!”<\/p>\n Men at work. Kinda. Not.<\/p><\/div>\n
We love the idea of feminist opera – what role does it
play in opera as a whole and in the wider arts
world?<\/strong><\/p>\n
“To the best of our awareness, Better Strangers is the
only feminist opera company in existence. There are occasional
feminist productions dotted around, but no other companies
dedicated to performing them, as far as we can tell. So
that\u2019s a start. In addition to putting on feminist
productions of existing operas, we\u2019ll be commissioning
new music from female composers, asking female writers to
contribute song lyrics and stories, and opening up discussions
about women\u2019s roles in opera, and how and why they need
to change.<\/p>\n
“At least two thirds of any singing class in a music
school is likely to be made up of women – most of them
sopranos – and yet each commonly performed opera will
contain two, maybe three roles for the ‘female’
soprano, mezzo or alto register. It\u2019s a hugely (and in
some ways needlessly) competitive world. So, instead of
wringing our hands about the dwindling interest in opera and
classical music, why not create more? Our commissioned works
will address this problem in two ways: firstly, by including
more soprano, mezzo and alto roles; and secondly, by scoring
many of them for small groups of instruments, so that they can
be easily performed with limited space and resources.<\/p>\n
“As well as performers, we\u2019re encouraging
contributions from female directors, MDs, producers (BadRep\u2019s
own Sarah C is working with us right now<\/a>), composers,
technicians, librettists and artists. Women composers are more
widely recognised now than they have ever been, with Performing
Right Society<\/a> awarding funding for music written and
commissioned by women, but there is still a lot of work to be
done. We hope that as we bring the work of stage professionals
and writers to light, women might start to be taken more
seriously across the arts world.<\/p>\n
“Our feminism will be intersectional, or it will be bullshit<\/a>.
We at Better Strangers are interested in stories, and
particularly stories that aren\u2019t often told. This means
listening to all kinds of different people – women, QUILTBAG<\/a>s,
people of colour, people from lower income brackets, people
with disabilities, and anyone else who has something to share
with the world.”<\/p>\n Artwork by Alex
Campbell<\/p><\/div>\n
The show features a lot of pieces for women performers.
What are your opinions on the roles available to women in
opera?<\/strong><\/p>\n
“The premise of
Ah! Forget My Fate!<\/strong> is that women are very
frequently typecast. The most common types of female
characters are the weepy virgin, the terrible slut, the
saucy servant girl, or the boy. In operas written before
1820 there were a lot more witches and evil sorceresses,
but the villain\u2019s role was handed over to basses
later on. That\u2019s it. If you\u2019re a weepy virgin
or a terrible slut in an opera written after 1830,
chances are you\u2019ll go mad or get consumption and
die. Bad luck!<\/p>\n
“How does one sing with consumption anyway? A
wasting disease of the lungs and throat plays havoc
with your timbre. There are a few exceptions, of
course. We just want to create more of them. Besides,
what about the mezzos who want to play a bold,
upstanding young hero? Or the basses who want to play
weepy, consumptive virgins?<\/p>\n
“There is a heavy heteronormative gender bias in
opera, which is kind of silly because not all
sopranos, mezzos and altos are women, and not all
tenors, baritones and basses are men. CN Lester of En Travesti<\/strong><\/a> is a gender neutral
mezzo. Florestan of Lashings of Ginger Beer<\/strong><\/a> is a
female baritone. Yet it\u2019s expected, in opera
as in life, that women and men will fit into these
nice little boxes with a set type of voice and a
set type of role to go with it, and it\u2019s
astonishing and disturbing how often the
woman\u2019s voice is silenced at the end of an
opera.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s next for Better
Strangers?<\/strong><\/p>\n
“After
Ah! Forget My Fate<\/strong>, Better
Strangers will be having some fun with
devised performance. Alongside that,
we\u2019ll be doing some education work in
community settings around how awesome
opera and feminism are, and how opera does
have something to offer people who
aren\u2019t rich and white, honest. Also
in the works is a show in which all the
dead heroines of famous operas rise again
as zombies and take their revenge.<\/p>\n
No, really. Keep an eye out –
it\u2019s going to be awesome.<\/p>\n
![\"Two](\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/www.badreputation.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/FB-200x300.jpg?resize=200%2C300\")
<\/a>![\"Drawing](\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/www.badreputation.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/Better-Strangers-268x300.jpg?resize=268%2C300\")
<\/a>