Interview with GH. “A Look into the Life of an Arts Worker during COVID-19.” HIST 150 Honors Spring 2021, Conducted by Mya Wilcox, March 2, 2021.

Introduction to Interview

A career in the arts is something many aspire to. Ask a group of children what they want to be when they grow up, and there is a very good chance at least one will mention being a singer, actor, or dancer. However, the everyday reality of pursuing this type of career often serves as a stark wakeup call to the former dreamers. Many performing artists work odd hours, are frequently unemployed, and are constantly in transition from one opportunity to the next. However, for the dedicated few who do continue despite these difficulties, the ability to collaborate and engage with an audience is the greatest affirmation of their decision.

The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in March of 2020 served as a devastating blow to these workers. Combined with a poor public health response, what was originally envisioned as merely a month-long shutdown has extended into nearly a year and a half of theaters being shuttered. As an opera performer and classical vocalist, my interviewee, GH, was one among many who were forced to take a break from the career to which she has dedicated the majority of her adult life.

However, the lack of live performances have not diminished the impact of the performing arts on general society. Many companies have increasingly embraced technology as a means of interacting with audience members in a safe way, livestreaming virtual concerts and filming performances from home. Additionally, the arts community has interacted with issues of racial diversity and equity following the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020, promising to work for increased representation racial equity within the sphere of theater and performance. In the following interview, GH and I will discuss her thoughts on the COVID-19 shutdown and how her career in opera has adapted to this change, including how it has been impacted by the aforementioned social changes that have intersected with performing arts in 2020 and 2021.

Biography

For this project, I chose to interview my aunt, GH. GH is a classically trained operatic vocalist who holds a B.M. (Bachelor of Music) in Vocal Performance from the University of Maryland, College Park, and an M.F.A. (Master of Fine Arts) in Vocal Performance and Operatic Literature from Northwestern University. Over the years, GH has performed in many regional opera productions throughout the United States in both leading and featured roles. GH is also an advocate for arts education, working with Wisconsin-based company Opera For the Young to introduce elementary-age children to the enduring art form of operatic performance. As of last year, GH and her husband have been residing in Louisville, Kentucky, which was a site for many protests against racial injustice following the murder of Breonna Taylor at the hands of law enforcement in March 2020.

Transcription

Mya Wilcox 0:01
So yeah, I’m really excited that you agreed to do it. I’m pretty sure I have to ask on the interview if you consent to having this interview published on a website.

GH 0:12
I do consent, and I also already filled out the consent, like the online consent form for you as well, so that should be through. And I’m super honored that you reached out to me like, this is really exciting.

Mya Wilcox 0:23
Aww thank you. I’m so excited. So I have a list of questions that I’ve sent to you. And I just thought we could sort of go through them–I might switch them around if the stuff–like, if we find that we want to talk about other stuff, too. But I guess my first question is like, why opera? What initially drew you to opera and vocal performance as a career?

GH 0:48
Yeah, it’s kind of a rare choice for people, like most people have never met an opera singer, but um, our family’s super musical, you know, and my mom and my stepfather are also super musical. Like, I don’t know if you know, but my stepfather Broomie used to be a conductor at opera. He used to teach musical theater. So I kind of was familiar with the world, but it wasn’t really until I–so I went to school initially for vocal performance, because I was like, “I’m good at singing, like, why not?” And music education, but like, once I got in the education classes, I kind of realized that I wasn’t drawn to it? Like I wasn’t thrilled by it. And you have to have a special kind of talent for that. And I just wasn’t feeling that back then. But I was like, “Okay, well, I guess I’ll be a voice major. And like, what do I do with my life with singing? I have no idea.” So my voice teacher, Dominic Cossa, sent me to Austria. [laughs]

Mya Wilcox 1:44
Wow. [interjecting]

GH 1:44
He sent me to Austria for this summer program in Salzburg, and Salzburg has a big classical music festival every summer. And I was–I had to learn to speak German, like overnight. And I had to go to classes every day. And I had to sing German songs every day and opera arias every day. But like, also, there were jumbotrons of operas everywhere in the city being played all the time. And they were in Italian, but the subtitles were in German, so you sort of like had to kind of figure out what was going on. But I just–I heard some singing there that I was blown away by and was like, “Oh, I want to sing like that.” But then it finally clicked for me that it’s not just being good at singing. It’s not just being good at particular, classical singing. I wasn’t ever really great at belting like your Aunt Aimee, like, I wasn’t like that. Or like, I couldn’t do hip hop or pop styles. I just–

Mya Wilcox 2:43
Yeah. [interjecting]

GH 2:44
I grew up listening to Simon and Garfunkel, you know. But it finally clicked for me that it was also storytelling and you tell these huge epic stories and you get to wear the costumes. And you get to sing in this really special particular way that a lot of people can’t do and a lot of people have never even heard. So finally I was like, “Okay, this is what I want.”

Mya Wilcox 3:07
That sounds–going to Austria–that’s just amazing. Amazing. And I really like what you said about the storytelling, that definitely ties into–

GH 3:17
Yeah, yeah! [interjecting]

Mya Wilcox 3:17
–the personal narrative, and retelling history. Um, is there a favorite story that you’ve gotten to tell–like one of your favorite performances, a little bit?

GH 3:28
Mmm, hmm. Well, okay, this kind of ties into your theme as well. I’ve had so many different kinds of performances that it’s really hard to say like, “This is my favorite.” But I can say that this one job that I have had for five seasons, five years, basically, is one of the most meaningful, and that’s working with this company that’s based in Madison, Wisconsin, called Opera for the Young. And what Opera for the Young does is like, people in the opera industry call it outreach, but it’s not, really–outreach kind of makes it sound like less than it is–what this company does is they take full-length operas, condense it into 45 minutes, and kind of rearrange the plot a little bit so that it’s more accessible for elementary school children. Then we pack everybody in a van: five performers, a pianist, and then four singers, all of the set, all of the costumes, all of our luggage, and then we drive around the Midwest in the deep of winter, singing at all of these schools. So I have probably sung every year at 200 schools, and  by the end of the year you’ve sung for nearly 30,000 children. Like me, personally, I’ve sung for 30,000 children.

But like, it’s not just being on the road and like getting to do the thing. What was so exciting about that was that after every performance we do a question and answer session with usually the entire school, and some of these schools are really small, some of them are really big. Like, we’ve had 1000 kids in a gym. Screaming. [laughs] It’s like, you never know what you’re walking into. And that was exciting too. But during these Q&A sessions, kids will ask the strangest things that you think you’re ready for. And then you’re not–like, I remember once, one girl was like, “What is music for? What is it for?” And we all like looked at each other, like, “I don’t know, what’s it for?” [laughs] And like, we kind of stammer out these answers, or like, another time, we were doing a version of Beauty and the Beast. And a little girl wrote raised her hand, and she said, “Why did Beauty’s father love her so much?” And we were like, “Ummm,” [laughs] or they ask things like, “How does the pianist play so fast?” Or, “How do you sing so high? How do you sing so loud?” It’s just, it’s always engaging.

And it’s almost every show, even though I did hundreds a year, you learn something new, just like about how opera, the art form, like, hits people–like how a kid absorbs it, what they pick up from it. Is it the moral of the story? Or is it actually the noises that we’re making, like, the shape of the music, and it just, every time you left a school–like, most of the time. There are schools that maybe not so much–but most of the time, when you left school, you’re like, “Wow, like, that’s so cool. Like those kids got something from this, and then shared it with us.” And like that, and like right down to the sticky first graders who always wanted to touch you.

Mya Wilcox 6:26
[laughs] That’s so fascinating. I love working with kids. And so just the fact that you’re doing that and you’re sharing that art form with them is so cool. And like, whether it’s the story, or whether it’s just the art of doing it and the art of  performing it–I think that’s just so cool.

GH 6:44
I mean, they always they asked us where we got our costumes. And we would explain that, like, we don’t just go to Party City and get a Halloween costume. Like we have a lady who makes them by hand, you know. And you hand paint the sets and like, kids are like, “I like to draw, I like clothes.” Like it’s just–it was cool to be in a whole process of production.

Mya Wilcox 7:02
Yeah, so neat. Wow. Well, I sort of want to shift gears just a little bit, because we have some current events that [laughs] we probably want to talk about a little bit.

GH 7:14
I don’t know what you mean! There’s nothing going on. [jokingly, laughter]

Mya Wilcox 7:16
One of the things that we have talked about so much already is COVID-19 and it’s affected us in so many different ways, individually and as a world. I would love to know, like, what were you doing last year? What were you doing right when all this stuff shut down? I was on spring break. So I left school and never came back. Yeah, like were you in the middle of something? Like what kind of work were you doing, and how did that change in March?

GH 7:47
So we had just moved here like a couple months before, and I was still doing Opera for the Young, which meant that I was traveling almost every other week to Wisconsin. But at that particular weekend–March 15th, I believe it was–I was in California with a friend of mine. And I was about to do my very first Mozart Requiem. I was the soprano soloist for Mozart Requiem. We had 300 high schoolers singing in our chorus plus a community chorus of adults, and a church–Sunnyvale Presbyterian Church–was hosting us. And, you know, they had flown us out there–they were paying us, like the whole nine yards–they put us up in a hotel, the whole nine yards, the pastor is a friend of ours so we were going out and eating all the great food. We had these amazing rehearsals, we got to go to the high school and talk directly to the kids. And the day of the performance we got the call that they were shutting everything down. And it was creeping in, like we heard, “Oh, the next town over shut down. Oh, the other town had a couple cases so they shut down their high school…” And then the school closed and like, well, we think we’re still gonna go ahead with the concert.

And then the day of the concert–we were supposed to do two shows–they were like, “Nope.” But they said–I think the pastor probably called the committee and was like, “Hey, is there anything we can do?” So they said, like, “Well, you guys were together last night, all 350 of you were already together, already singing. So we’re gonna let you do the concert, but you’re not going to have an audience. We’ll just live stream it.” So it was my first live streamed performance of that size ever. And there was no one in the audience. And it was like, we finished the piece. And then there was just dead silence. Nothing happened until the conductor who was looking at us just went like this. [claps frantically, laughs] And then when they cut the feed and then sort of–like they kind of acknowledge the orchestra and then they acknowledge the soloist, everybody that we talked to in the high school went ballistic. Like they screamed for us like it was like a sports event. And that doesn’t usually happen in opera! Sometimes there’s cheering but it’s not usually like 300 high school kids screaming.

Mya Wilcox 10:13
No, and especially the people who are performing with you.

GH 10:16
Yes. And that was so validating, like, “Oh, thanks, guys!” [laughter] So that happened like, right–that was like the day of the shutdown. And then the dominoes started to fall, I was supposed to make my debut at Madison Opera, which is also in Wisconsin–I’m very big in Wisconsin. [laughs] I don’t know why. I just am.

But it was a regional opera company, kind of a big deal, it was like one of the, you know, one of the more respected regional opera companies. I was getting to do a pretty big role, and they called. I knew it was coming, but they called and they’re like, “Hey, it’s not going to happen.” and I was like, “Uhunh!” [groans]

Mya Wilcox 10:54
Yeah… [sadly]

GH 10:55
They paid me anyway, which is a big deal. Most companies weren’t able to do that. So yeah, I had a lot going on: Opera for the Young canceled, that concert canceled, and then my big debut canceled. And after that, it was like, “Well…”

Mya Wilcox 11:10
Yeah. The dominoes–you’re so right. Um, I guess this is just a little bit more general but relating to that, like, how, over the past year, as stuff has been–as people have been trying to start to figure out–how do we do performing arts? How do we do stuff like opera and vocal performance, like in the COVID-19 era? What are some changes that you have seen within the performing arts community or the opera community in response to like, everything that COVID-19 has caused to like shut down, or be restrained, or–?

GH 11:48
Well, you’re musical and you sing, I know that. So you’re probably aware that singers are considered super spreaders. [laughter] And, like, especially opera singers, we literally–we learn to project without a microphone so that like, a room of 1000 seats can hear us, like we’re super super super spreaders. So like, the main thing is, we just shut down. And they would hold out as long as they could. And then like, the Lyric Opera in Chicago was like, “Guys, we have to cancel the whole season.” The Met canceled one show. Another show, again, dominoes. So really, most opera productions in the traditional style, or the typical style, they’re just not happening right now. So companies have switched to streaming services, like the Met in particular will show you old things that they recorded. Or something like, a couple of famous people recorded recitals that people can watch. But it’s just–that’s really pretty much it. It’s like live stream, pre-recorded, or nothing at all. Like there’s no way for us to really do this in person.

Mya Wilcox 12:23
Yeah, we watched one of the ones on the Met early quarantine. [laughs]

[As a response to the closures of theaters and opera houses due to the COVID-19 pandemic, PBS showed many prerecorded operas and performances on their channels in 2020 as part of their Great Performances programming.]

GH 12:59
Yeah.

Mya Wilcox 13:02
I think it was Turandot, or something like that?

GH 13:08
Yeah. Cool. Yeah, that’s a good one.

Mya Wilcox 13:10
Good. Very good. Um, has there been anything that’s changed for you specifically, like, are you doing teaching online? Like, what is that? What’s your day to day look like, sort of?

GH 13:23
I’m like, kind of retired. [laughs] I can sleep in as late as I want, and like, drink coffee. And like, thank–thank God, really, that my husband has the job that he has, because if he didn’t, we might be in big trouble. Because we just moved and we have a mortgage and like, all that kind of thing. But um, you know, we’re able to make ends meet because of him. But like, for me, I have pretty much nothing, nothing to do. [laughs] I do teach online, I have, like four or five voice students, it fluctuates. And that’s actually been pretty cool. Because I didn’t teach a lot before I didn’t have time. I wasn’t like, interested enough to kind of force it into my schedule. But now I have time. And it’s actually really fun and exciting. And my students are all different ages. I’ve had a nine year old student, I have a 72 year old student, so that’s fun. And I record digital solos for a church in California, a different church, that [laughs] [indecipherable]. And I also perform–I do most of the music leading at our church as well. And I don’t usually get paid for that, but sometimes they’re–you know, because it’s my church. [laughs] But sometimes they’re like, “Hey, we know that you’re not performing a lot. So we want to just give you a little bit of money.” It’s really nice of them to do that.

Mya Wilcox 14:39
Yeah, yeah. Well, there’s there’s still some ways even if it’s not all the ways that we’d like it to be.

GH 14:46
Yeah, and then my stepfather and I also recorded a concert for Valentine’s Day.

Mya Wilcox 14:51
Aww. [interjecting]

GH 14:51
–And put that up online for people to enjoy. But you know, it’s more a labor of love than actually being a professional. [laughs]

Mya Wilcox 15:02
Yes, I understand. Um, so you mentioned that a couple companies, some of the bigger companies, have been switching to live streams. Um, but it sounds like in some cases, some of those things were already in place and they just were able to put them out to the wider population–like, have you seen technology sort of coming into opera, especially as technology is just becoming more of a way of life, regardless of COVID-19? Like, are people using technology to engage more with opera, or are people in the opera community wanting to use that as a tool? Or is it really, just [indecipherable] stage?

GH 15:40
Yeah, absolutely. Opera is, you know, a really, really super old art form. And it hasn’t like, fundamentally changed at all since it started, like, really, it has not fundamentally changed. Other than, like, now we have buildings specifically dedicated to opera–opera houses and theaters and things like that. Like, literally from 1600. It hasn’t changed. The music has changed, the people have changed, the style–like the whole process–not so much. But even the Metropolitan Opera, which, like, I’m kind of mad at them right now. So  I’ll get to that in a second. But even they did a weekly radio broadcast. And if you ask your grandfather about this, he’ll tell you too–he listens pretty religiously, every Saturday, 1pm, weekly radio broadcast, but they had, before the pandemic, started filming them in HD, and releasing them even into movie theaters. So you could buy a ticket to a movie, it was always a little bit more expensive. But then go see a live opera being performed at that moment. Yes, theater, which is really cool. So that had been happening before.

And then when I was when I was in college and undergrad–way back in the olden days. [old lady voice, laughter] In 2010 is when I went to graduate school. Most companies still needed you to put your audition on a CD-ROM, and then put it in the physical mail and send it to them with a check, an actual physical check. And  even then, in 2011, you were like, “Have you heard of YouTube? Like, you don’t have to do this.” [laughter] But nowadays, I think most companies have had time to sort of get used to it. And most auditions go through websites, and like you can–like I have a whole backlog of audition videos on YouTube that are not open to the public. So like, things like that.

And even in the performance, up before the pandemic, projections were starting to be used, like digital graphics projections of people running through things, especially big scenes, like forests, or battle scenes, things that are hard to do physically. They’re starting to kind of play with the concept of using projections, I was in a couple shows like that. And they were always pretty cool. Weirdly though, projectors overheat and like, go out in the middle of the show, like we haven’t quite figured it out yet, right? But like the music will also involve some electronic elements every once in a while, like back beats or things like that, or theramins, like just  strange electronic elements that maybe you wouldn’t think of immediately if you were thinking about opera. So yeah, it was there, but it’s definitely like, the only means of us communicating our art at all right now is like Facebook and YouTube and

Mya Wilcox 15:56
Yeah. [interjecting]

GH 17:02
your own personal live streams and the company live streams.

Mya Wilcox 18:42
Well, um, the Met. What is–? [laughs]

GH 18:46
So–[laughs] you know, they kind of set the standard for opera in America to a large extent. And so when they canceled their season but didn’t give any emergency pay to their musicians, choristers, soloists, tech–like tech people–and stagehands, producers, you know, just the people that like take your ticket, they didn’t give any pay to those people and it’s now been over a year and people are still mad about it. Like if you go on Facebook to the Metropolitan Opera, like whenever they post like, “Hey, we’re doing this recital that we’re gonna put up online,” half the comments are like, “Oh, I love that soprano. You should pay your musicians. Oh, I love that show. You should pay your musicians.” Like, people are mad about it.

Mya Wilcox 19:38
Yeah, that’s definitely another effect of COVID on the whole industry because it’s not just the performers. It’s all of the other people involved in making the production just like–talking about the Opera for the Young, there’s so many elements and they’re all valuable.

GH 19:54
Exactly. And we’re all out of work, from the costume designers to the stagehands, you know? None of us are working the amount that we’re used to working or even at all.

Mya Wilcox 20:03
Yeah, yeah, that is crazy. Um, so you just moved to Louisville, like recently. And Louisville has had a lot going on over the past summer with just the Black Lives Matter movement and the the calls for change. And just what was that like, coming in in March and then having all of this happen over the summer? And then what does it kind of look like now? I know that’s shifting gears a little bit from opera, but–

[On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor, a Black woman and EMT serving in Louisville, Kentucky, was shot and killed in her sleep by a team of white Louisville policemen when they broke into her boyfriend’s house using a silent “no-knock” warrant. The group was in search of a suspect wanted for drug possession, who did not live at the residence. Taylor’s untimely and unjust death, particularly coupled with the horrific death of George Floyd at the hands of a white Minneapolis policeman, served as a catalyst for the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement and related protests against racial injustice in the summer of 2020.]

GH 20:37
Well, no. [interjecting]

Mya Wilcox 20:38
–it is the last year.

GH 20:40
It’s actually like with everything that went down with Breonna Taylor, like, I typically would have been out of town, I wouldn’t have been here a lot, I would have been here very little. And I would have been very–I mean, as an opera singer, you have to really be careful about your voice and your body, you can’t get tired, you can’t scream a lot, you can’t just go out and do stuff. And COVID was big scary for us for that reason. And like, because I wasn’t working, I was able to go to the protests. I was able to show up in a way that is meaningful to me and important to me, and I believe important in the community, but that, you know, opera actually would have prevented me from doing.

Mya Wilcox 21:23
Wow, yeah. [interjecting]

GH 21:25
And we were able–we facilitated some protests, well, some stand-ins, we called them “solidarity stand-ins” at the church itself, so our congregation got to show up. And in the early days of quarantine, it was the only way we could see each other.

Mya Wilcox 21:37
Yeah, yeah. [interjecting]

GH 21:39
Outside, with masks on. So I was able to go downtown and participate in some of the demonstrations. And I would say, like, I don’t know a whole lot about the artistic community here. But a lot of the buildings would hang banners that say “Black Lives Matter.” Like even the Presbyterian Church USA, our headquarters are here, and they hung a big banner and the opera house even posted a sign, like it was neat to see even though you couldn’t really participate in any of those activities.

Mya Wilcox 22:17
Yeah, I didn’t even think about how the schedules would like, just suddenly become–well, I mean, in the back of my mind, it was there. But I didn’t even think about how it would become so open. And then it opened up space for you guys to like, use your voices there.

GH 22:32
Yeah. And it seems a little selfish to say because, you know, it’s my voice. It’s so precious, but like, really, I can’t do my job without it. But like being able to participate in, in chanting and singing–we did a lot of hymn singing, you know, like the Presbyterian Church led a couple of marches and we just walked around singing into our masks, or like standing on, you know, big flower planters so that we weren’t in people’s ways. And that’s the kind of thing I would avoid when I’m performing a lot because it’s hard on the voice, you know, but it was nice to be able to participate, even though the subject is not a nice one.

Mya Wilcox 23:08
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You mentioned stuff about the Opera House, or maybe the Opera House in Louisville. I know that there have been, especially given the Black Lives Matter protests over the summer, there’s been a lot of stuff within the theatre community and the performing arts community that’s calling–that their people are calling for more racial equity and diversity behind the scenes. Have you seen effects of those? Or have you been in spaces where you’ve seen that happening in the performing arts community, recently or just over the years?

GH 23:47
Yeah, I mean, certainly the Black Lives Matter movement in recent days, I mean, over the last year, has made everything more urgent and more, you know–if you want to survive as a company, and like with your reputation intact, you had to make moves like right away, right? Visible actions. And also the Me Too movement–a lot of conductors got fired during the Me Too movement, because performing arts businesses, in general, are kind of open to abuse. It’s a very tricky situation. But even before this past summer, it was starting to get talked about more, like boards looked a little different. Opera is a very elitist–we have an elitism problem, we’re aware of it. Because opera is expensive and has never paid for itself. And so the people with resources, who especially in this country typically tend to be overwhelmingly white, you know, got the call the shots for a long time. Like, for example, The Magic Flute. There’s a role in Magic Flute called “Papageno.” And he’s a baritone and he’s–it’s not important what he is–but Magic Flute gets done like almost every other year, right, like everybody does The Magic Flute all the time, it’s one of the most popular, I’ve sung in it a billion times. The Metropolitan Opera had its first Black baritone sing the role of “Papageno” last year. Like, even though it’s written by Mozart–it’s been around a long, long time, and it was their first Black–so, it’s actually a friend of mine, Will Liverman.

Mya Wilcox 25:22
Wow.

GH 25:23
So it was like, just happening, [laughs,] like, just very slowly happening. But now, people are making, I mean, companies are making more of an effort to cast black folks and to cast, you know, BIPOC folks, even indigenous people, other people of color, that sort of thing. They’re making demonstrable efforts to do that so they can point to that and be like, “We’re actually doing this now.” And hiring directors, even female directors and female conductors who, like–I can count the ones I know, on one hand, you know what I mean? Even though this industry is pretty vast. So, you know, to answer the question, like, yes, [laughs] things have sort of changed, but opera moves very slowly.

Mya Wilcox 26:10
Yeah.

GH 26:11
I will say, even during the pandemic, Will Liverman, who I just mentioned, composed an opera called The Factotum. And he’s putting it together at the Lyric Opera in Chicago right now. And it is an updated version of The Barber of Seville. But it’s done with like, trap music, house music, hip hop, but also classical singing styles. And the entire cast is black, the director is black, the producers are black. And like, the Lyric Opera House is like another bastion of opera in the country. So it’s, like, pretty amazing that they’re doing it and just the fact that like, I know that guy. Like, I know that guy! [whispers jokingly]

Mya Wilcox 26:48
That sounds incredible. Yeah. Incredible. And just like, that’s really interesting to think about, like merging opera with other art forms.

GH 26:58
Yeah. [interjecting]

Mya Wilcox 26:59
Putting it together in a new way. Like, I wonder how much like that will continue to happen as we move forward in the future.

GH 27:09
Yeah, I think so too, because, you know, we’re still performing operas that were written in the 15th century, today, like right now. [laughs] And like, that’s strange when you think about it, like, yeah, you can go see paintings in a museum, but like a living art from the 15th century. But also like, can we make room for new things? Like, stay relevant? Yeah, it’s pretty cool. I mean, like I said, opera moves slowly and we make a lot of missteps. Like, Oberlin College was giving a faculty recital that was called “A Showcase of Black Artistry.” But all of the performers were white. It was all black composers, but all the performers were white. So all of their publicity materials had white people headshots on them, and the Black community was like, “That’s not what we mean. [indecipherable] You guys got to work on this.” So, you know, we’re–there’s a lot of learning to be done, I think, in this industry.

Mya Wilcox 28:02
Yes. Yes. Well, yeah. Thank you so much. I think I have one more question.

GH 28:07
Sure.

Mya Wilcox 28:08
And it’s pretty broad. So if you can’t come up with one answer, totally fine. But, from when you have started performing until now, what do you feel is the biggest change, or the biggest shift, that has occurred within either the way that you perform or the way that the opera community operates? It’s a big question.

GH 28:33
[laughs] It is a really big question, especially since opera, the industry of opera itself, is really tricky. It’s a really tricky beast, that doesn’t pay some people as well as it should, or at all. And like, other people get too much money. And we need donors. And anyway–I can get totally off track about that. That hasn’t changed a lot, so that’s kind of a bummer. But what I have noticed, at least for me, personally, is that the competition that I initially felt with my peers and colleagues, which I think we all felt, at least early on, when I started like in I don’t know, 2008-9, when I started really performing professionally, it was like, “Oh, she gets that gig that I wanted, or she won that scholarship that I wanted, or why did they hire him? He’s so terrible,” and you just kind of think all these negative things in the back of your mind. In the last few years, especially the more professional experience I get, the more that it’s not school, or like kind of, we call them apprenticeships or residencies, [laughs] the more grown up stuff I get to do, the more it’s about really supporting one another.

And the discussions. Just like you asked–about Black Lives Matter, things about the Me Too movement–we’re all talking to each other about that. Like even though I’m not a director and I don’t sit on the board, I’m always talking to my friends about it. Like “What do you think?” Like, “Do you know anybody who’s been through this? Do you know anybody that I should watch out for?” like, and then, also, “I think you sounded great in this recital that you put online, I think it’s amazing that you’re doing musical theater now, I think it’s so cool that you’re teaching voice lessons,” and like, we really are so supportive when it used to be you had to scrabble for everything to you know, keep it for yourself, but now it’s like, I’ll put my friends up for jobs that I can’t do, or, I celebrate everybody that I work with, like having been in a show with Will Liverman. Like, now he’s really blowing up, right? I’m like, “Okay, cool, man. Like, you’re probably never gonna talk to me again. But that’s amazing. Because I want you to win, I want you to win! [laughs] I want you to do all the things!” So I think, yeah, to put it simply, the conversations that artists have I feel have really changed. Because we’re, we’re kind of all in it together now, rather than being against one another. And I think that that’s really important, especially during the pandemic, when we’re all sad, like, we’re all really, really sad. And during the Black Lives Matter movement, when like, I have people of color who are my colleagues, and, you know, they’re struggling, but also they’re like, “Hey, this has been going on, like, a long time, like, thank you for noticing.” But, you know. And, you know, my women colleagues–like, it’s just, it’s been really cool to deepen our understanding of what we need from each other and to really figure out ways to support each other.

Mya Wilcox 31:24
Yeah. Well, that was a really good answer to a very broad question. [laughter]

GH 31:29
He sent me the questions ahead of time, so I had time to think about it. [laughs]

Mya Wilcox 31:33
I’m glad. I’m glad that was helpful. Well, I think I’m going to stop the recording. But I just want to say thank you for being willing to be interviewed.

GH 31:42
Thank you so much. I’m really very honored. Thank you so much.

Mya Wilcox 31:45
Thank you. All right, let me stop it.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Research

The COVID-19 pandemic most visibly affected the arts community in America on Thursday, March 12, 2020, when New York governor Andrew Cuomo issued a mandate temporarily shutting down gatherings of 500 people or more. The closures represented what the New York Times called a more “aggressive” approach to stopping the spread of the virus in the United States. Cuomo’s recommendation not only shut down the iconic New York Broadway theaters and performance spaces such as the Metropolitan Opera, but also affected the operations of cultural touchstones such as art museums and concert halls. Performance spaces and companies across the US similarly followed suit.

Although this closure was meant to be merely temporary (the initial suggestion was through the end of the month), as of March 2021 many employed in the performing arts community have been unable to return to their jobs full time, even in the modified, masked, and socially distant way that other professions have been able to implement. In order to consistently operate, theaters need to produce a steady stream of revenue, and if audiences are severely limited the costs of operation and associated risks of COVID-19 outweigh any benefits of staying open. Furthermore, the act of singing produces a greater amount of airborne droplets than regular activity, which creates a health risk for both performers and potential audience members. While the choice to close performing spaces has been deemed necessary for the greater good, the consequences are great. Workers in all spheres of the arts–actors, musicians, creative teams, and technical directors–have been unemployed for over a year and billions of dollars have been lost in potential revenue. In a report from the National Endowment for the Arts in January 2021, it was estimated that there were “cumulative losses of 2.3 million jobs in creative occupations.”

It should be noted that the devastating impact of COVID-19 on the performing arts sector is not the only focus of this interview. Themes such as technology and the arts, racial justice within and outside of the performing arts community, youth exposure to the arts, and even generational changes within opera were discussed in this interview and are similarly fascinating topics. However, for the purpose of this research and interview I chose to hone in on the theme of COVID-19, which is arguably the most visible and catastrophic example of social change in recent memory.

Bibliography

Follow Up

The interviewee was sent the transcript in its current form prior to the post being published. As of yet, no changes have been requested.

Recording and Transcription Process

About a week before the interview, I texted my aunt asking whether she would consider being interviewed and we subsequently set up a time and date that worked well for us. For the purpose of recording this interview, I scheduled a meeting on the video conferencing platform Zoom. I then used the “record” feature on this platform while talking and saved the interview to my computer. During the interview, we did not turn our cameras off–I believe that this was helpful because we were able to laugh and converse familiarly with each other, but this may have also inadvertently accounted for some of the interjections that are heard throughout the recording. After completing the interview, I uploaded it to the “otter.ai” transcription service, where I made necessary grammatical edits such as names and sentence endings. For the purpose of clarity, I also cut out many excessive filler words (such as “um,” “like,” and “you know,”) and some false starts–there are many instances on the recording where my aunt and I tried to restructure the thought we were trying to convey. I removed many of these instances to make the transcript more readable, but they can still be heard on the recording. Overall, I think that the interview and transcription process went smoothly and I would definitely try this format again.