Gearing Up for Considering Matthew Shepard, Part I

So already, three weeks from tonight, on March 28, the Unicorn Singers and Broad Cove Chorale (BCC-US) will perform Considering Matthew Shepard, Craig Hella Johnson's passion oratorio, in Norwell, Massachusetts. We'll perform the piece again on Sunday afternoon, March 29. It's an amazing piece of music, one that takes singers and listeners on an important journey; it's well worth the drive to Boston's South Shore.

As our concert publicity explains, "Craig Hella Johnson's contemporary passion oratorio, so well-suited to the needs of our times, recounts the brutal slaying of a young, gay Wyoming college student in 1998 and the hate-filled, anti-gay protest staged by members of the Westboro Baptist Church at his funeral several days later. Yes, it tells a deeply disturbing story, often in difficult language, but ultimately it affirms life. Blending varied musical styles and diverse text sources, it accommodates a wide range of listener tastes and sensibilities--and attests to the power of art and music to help people learn, grow, heal, hope, and love."

I've been living and breathing this piece for several months now, and that's been my privilege as a choral singer, a former teacher in a high school with a very diverse student population, an American Jew, a sometimes blogger and poet, and a believer in the power of art (literature, visual art, music) to enlighten--and sometimes even to transform and to heal.*

I also believe that under many circumstances, art can bring people together. Time and time again during my teaching career, I watched how poems, novels, short stories, and plays got my students talking to one another about who they really were, how the world worked (which was not the same for all of them), how the world should work, and how the world, maybe, could work, if ____.

Time and time again, I bore witness to how much all of this mattered to them: whenever I read articles that focused exclusively on the psychological and sociological development of young people, I wanted to scream, "Why aren't you also talking about their spiritual and philosophical development? Why can't you see that they're not just thinking about career paths and personal goals and others' opinions of them; they're wondering what life is about, what it's for. They already sense that they're part of something bigger than just their individual lives and choices; they're already sensing the possibility of a whole other kind of meaning."

Cambridge Rindge and Latin School

The discussions that literature precipitated in my classroom sometimes surfaced our differences,** allowing us to explore them, more often than not respectfully.*** What we had in common invariably surfaced too--not always without some struggle. Usually, we were left with the feeling that we had some "important stuff" in common--enough so that we could experience ourselves as an authentic if slightly tentative "we" who could move forward together toward something positive. When things went well, our "we" strengthened over time.

So why this former teacher digression? All of this came back to me when Broad Cove Chorale-Unicorn Singers conductor Margo Euler began reaching out to singers in both groups last summer to see if we could be on board with singing Considering Matthew Shepard (CMS). It hasn't been our custom, at least during the time I've been singing with the groups, to perform a one-work spring program as heavy in content and as overtly concerned with social justice and spiritual healing as CMS is. Several singers were initially opposed, and many who came on board relatively early on did so with reservations. Over the last couple of months, I've become aware through conversations with my fellow singers of just how many of them belonged to the "singers with reservations" category: lots more than I'd even imagined. And some still do.

As for me, I was on board from the very beginning--not just because when I first listened to the piece I found it moving and beautiful and invitingly singable, but because everything in my own experience had long ago convinced me of the power of art--especially art created by compassionate artists--to support groups and individuals in encountering difficult stories and truths--and in becoming communities that can move forward together. 

Craig Hella Johnson

But let's face it: the members of the Broad Cove Chorale and the Unicorn Singers are singers, not students learning to dialogue and collaborate across difference. And while I'm practically certain--I haven't polled them--that making music is important spiritually to all of us who sing in these groups, we spend our time together learning notes, rhythms, and then the way to sing them with words so that they become music that communicates to others, not talking about how we each are experiencing it emotionally and spiritually. Initially I wondered if we could convincingly sing our audience into becoming the unified "we" that CMS aspires to create when we ourselves were divided. But that was before I understood how much Craig Hella Johnson's vision and composition would actually help us become a "we"--or at least enough of a "we." As I said in the paragraph that began this blog post, the piece is amazing.

Yes, this is a blog post. Yes, it's my habit and pleasure to try to put things into words and to talk about things that I think are important. And yes, I love to write about art that moves me. As a matter of fact, in other years I've written blog posts about poems set to music and whole programs presented by BCC-US that have thoroughly engaged and moved me--and that I believed had so much to offer to others. I'm staying true to that tradition with this blog post--and with the ones that will follow it.

Eager for our performances of Considering Matthew Shepard to have good-sized, enthusiastic audiences, I volunteered to convene a publicity and outreach subcommittee. Those who volunteered to be on it brought with them many different valuable skills and experiences; check out this youtube video advertisement one of them created to capture various singers' thoughts about and impressions of CMS.

Early on, another member of our subcommittee, Stephen Tooker, a longtime Unicorn Singer tenor, began talking about how important it was for us to decide how we wanted to talk about Considering Matthew Shepard. He began thinking and writing, and then he and I began thinking and writing together: what did people need to know about Considering Matthew Shepard in order to decide to come to it? What might hold them back from wanting to come hear it, and what might make them want to come to hear it? Stephen taught English at Massasoit Community College; I taught English at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. We had a really good time reading, writing, and thinking together.

Our joint writing led to an invitation from Margo Euler and Linden Ponds Diversity and Inclusion Committee to give a talk at Linden Ponds, the senior living community where Margo lives and where we will be performing our dress-rehearsal/first performance of CMS just over a week for now. Because Stephen couldn't be at Linden Ponds last Thursday, I gave the talk, which very much reflected the thinking of both of us.

Laramie Photo by Debi Milligan

In the next week or so, I'll be sharing that talk here. Powerpoint slides and all. So if you're on the fence about coming to hear Considering Matthew Shepard or if you'd just plain like to learn more about it. Stay tuned. As I've already said twice, the piece really is amazing! Hope you'll consider a trip down to United Church of Christ Norwell to see and hear it for yourself.

* (I'm still working on the question of the whether you can have healing without transformation, and vice versa.)
** I was part of the group, though I was the teacher. 
*** Making the classroom safe for such talk is always hard work, and it's not always successful hard work.