Cast of Silence, centre Lara Ciekiewicz and Telya Kasahara 笠原 貞野, NUOVA Vocal Arts. Photo by Nanc Price

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Darrin Hagen has written plays, songs, stories, essays, queer histories, a memoir, an award-winning film documentary. He’s created drag cabarets (and sometimes starred in them too), devised queer tours, hosted web series, created music videos. He’s acted, directed, dramaturged. He’s composed sound scores; he’s written string quartets and requiems. He’s a veritable poster child for versatility.

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But he has never written an opera libretto — till now.

Silence, premiering Saturday on the Orange Hub stage in a NUOVA Vocal Arts commission, is Hagen’s libretto-writing  debut. The opera adapts a highly unusual 1999 play by the English playwright/ indie screenwriter Moira Buffini, with music by Vancouver composer Leslie Uyeda.

Darrin Hagen, playwright/ actor/ director/ filmmaker, composer/ activist and now librettist. Photo supplied.

The new opera, the inspiration of NUOVA artistic director Kim Mattice Wanat, is a project “three years of obsession” (as Hagen puts it) in the making. And it started with a proposition by Mattice Wanat, and this from Hagen: “You do know I’ve never done this before?”

It’s the same question Hagen asked when the proposition of the film Pride vs. Prejudice: The Delwin Vriend Story, was put to him. “But Saying No doesn’t get you anywhere!” he declares, with his signature Hagen rumble of a laugh. That film documents the inspirational story of a man, fired for being gay, whose challenge of a hostile government led to a seminal Supreme Court decision that has changed the lives of LGBTQ+ people in this country and beyond. It premiered a year ago at the Rainbow Vision Film Festival (“40 years to the day I was crowned Miss Flashback in 1984”). And its year on the festival circuit since then has included a European premiere in Poland.

Phillip Addis and Telya Kasahara 笠原 貞野 in Silence, NUOVA Vocal Arts. Photo by Nanc Price

From the start, Silence appealed to Hagen for its juxtaposition of light and dark, a medieval England setting and contemporary resonances: “so medieval and so modern!” It juggles gender and sexuality, the seduction of tyrannical power and vengeance, an imminent apocalypse … it’s a juicy palette. The title character, as Hagen explains, is a boy, the 14-year-old ruler of Cumbria, who discovers on his wedding night that he’s a girl: a secret medieval same-sex marriage. Then there’s a king, weak and risible until, when crossed, he gets out of bed and turns into a cruel and violent tyrant — hey, is this sounding at all familiar for our moment?

Silence “feels perfect for an opera,” says Hagen, echoing director Mattice Wanat. “Elevated characters, kings, priests, heroic action, fugitives, high stakes … an epic story told in a small work.” Silence unfolds in arias, duets, a trio, ensemble numbers. “And when they all sing together, it’s so exciting!”

Telya Kasahara 笠原 貞野 in Silence, NUOVA Vocal Arts. Photo by Nanc Price.

There’s no spoken text, per se. Hagen’s libretto, laced liberally with lines from Buffini’s play, is the lyrics, Hagen says. “And Leslie’s music — challenging, dissant, atonal — drives the plot and the characters. Always forward! It’s alive with character and intent at every moment.” Hagen says he responded to the challenge of a libretto by arranging it on the page like stanzas of poetry. And then composer Uyeda did her work. And in rehearsal, adjustments of the score have been made “to respond to the rhythms and energy of the performers.”

“I’m in awe of the performers and the team,” declares Hagen. “They show up and sing on day 1 (of rehearsals)!…. It’s like watching Olympic athletes. And they sing full-out every time.”

A chamber ensemble (“no accordion in this show!” says Hagen of the notable absence of his own signature instrument), six singers, a conductor, costumes, lights…. “A small opera, a huge show!”

Hagen, who’s just finishing his term as the U of A’s Lee Playwright-in-Residence, has been “watching and learning,” as he puts it modestly, at opera rehearsals, a new scene for him. And meanwhile, he’s been hanging out with the Shakespeare crowd too. The Freewill Shakespeare Festival’s upcoming production of As You Like It features an original Hagen score (with the play’s songs composed by Mhairi Berg). The play’s court scenes have “an electronic synth base.” Then, as the characters repair to “the magical world” of the  Forest of Arden, the music goes acoustic. And it all ends with a flourish, “a full-on techno dance party, as Hagen describes.

Luckily the opera and the Shakespeare are rehearsing on the same floor of the Fine Arts Building at the U of A. Or the Hagen schedule would implode.

It’s been an intensely creative post-COVID era for him. Pride vs Prejudice continues to tour film festivals. And this summer, in a writer’s residency at Wallace Stegner House in East End, Sask.,  Hagen will  be turning his play Witch Hunt at the Strand, which culls from a sorry chapter in Edmonton history, into a book (“creative non-fiction” as he describes). And then … the Fringe, and the latest instalment of the serial adventures of Flora and Fauna he co-creates with Trevor Schmidt. In Flora and Fawna Face Their Fears, the intrepid and quite large little girls face “a new threat to their relationship.” Stay tuned. No mean girls allowed.

The NUOVA Vocal Arts festival also includes two musicals: Once Upon A Mattress (June 20 to 28) and Between The Lines (June 26, 28 a,

PREVIEW

Silence

NUOVA Vocal Arts

Libretto by: Darrin Hagen adapted from the Moira Buffini play

Music by: Leslie Uyeda

Directed by: Kim Mattice Wanat

Starring: Clarence Frazer, Phillip Addis, Teiya Kasahara 笠原貞野, Rebecca Cuddy, Matthew Dalen, Lara Ciekiewicz.

Where: Orange Hub, 10045 156 St.

Running: Saturday through June 27

Tickets: showpass.com