A CALAMITOUS BOUQUET

TEAM

Joe Benjamin - Composer/Librettist
Brent Edmondson- Collaborator, Management
Justin Werner - Stratagem Management
Jordan Rutter - Countertenor
Iain Bell - Adviser
Gregory Spears - Adviser

MUSIC PREVIEW

ENITRE SCORE + AUDIO

SYNOPSIS

(in eight scenes)

The Genders: We meet Caelum, the deity of time, air, temperature and light residing in the sky. She embodies femininity. Out of Caelum’s flesh now evolves Terra, the deity of space, nutrients and water. He embodies masculinity. Finally, the deities are set into The Land of Hortum, a fictional space of utopian existence. Together, time, air, temperature, light, space, nutrients and water constitute the seven essential requirements for life to form.

The Lust: Terra introduces Inlimis into Hortum. Naked, with feeble posture and a complete void of expression, Inlimis enters Hortum. At the sight of Caelum, Inlimis develops a sudden, deeply carnal lust which leads him to engage in passionate sex with her. During the act - describing Caelum’s female features with adoring detail - Inlimis picks different flowers out of Caelum’s body. Next Inlimis turns to Terra and faces a similar, deep carnal lust. Inlimis now has sex with Terra whose masculine features are equally described with adoring prose. Inlimis now picks flowers out of Terra’s body as well. 

The Self: Stepping away from this highly sexualized scene, Inlimis now observes and studies the bouquet of flowers he curated from Terra and Caelum’s bodies. He hovers above the ground and starts adorning his entire body with the flowers from the bouquet he had just picked. This ceremonial and celebratory act of self-determination defines the culmination of Inlimis’ identification to become who he picked to be. 

The Celebration: Terra and Caelum now celebrate Inlimis for the beautiful curation of his identity. They sing an ode of joy for Inlimis’ successful and courageous becoming. 

The Experience: We are now in a schoolyard. As a bystander we regard a 4 second moment of Inlimis walking past us, stretched into an eight minute composition; highlighting - in the most minuscule detail - the antagonist, male and female forces moving Inlimis’ body. This is to describe the complex interplay of masculine and feminine forces guiding Inlimis’ proud strut. 

The Affront: Inlimis is now subject to horrendous confrontation from other students and teachers. They insult him with heavily gender - connotated slurs like “tranny”, “faggot”, “pussy” etc. Inlimis is ridiculed for his non-masculine behaviors and ostracized. 

The Proclamation: In an attempt to defend Inlimis, Caelum blurts proclamations from the sky that can be heard across the Land of Hortum into the schoolyard (“Humans are bisexual by default”, “Sex is not a spectrum”, “Gender is an illusion”, “Identity is not tied to sex” etc.). All of the hypothesis and assertions are stated without commentary or elucidation. Caelum incites confusion and a yearning for explanation.

The Dysphoria: Mortified and distraught, Inlimis now rushes into the sky towards Caelum, constantly gasping for air, shivering from coldness. In tears and agony he screams at Caelum blaming her for his demise. When he realizes that despite his running towards Caelum he never seems to reach her, he stops, turns to the audience and starts slowly tearing all of Caelum’s flowers out of his own flesh in hopes of ridding himself of his female traits. The lights dim progressively. He shivers harder and reaches for air. Until ugliness overcomes his face; and he bleeds to death. 

INTENT

Similar to Scalia/Ginsburg we offer a platform of common cause on which we highlight a moderate path without deepening anyone’s agenda. We let agnostic, nuanced and sophisticated conversation about sex and identity and the airing of it heal a festering wound while skirting controversy by acting as a unifier. We do not aim to present any side as evil or just and we are creating a timeless piece harboring a vision for a future that is better than today. We are wary of the landscape of ever changing definitions and terminology; hence we aim to prevent the piece from quickly becoming outdated by carefully choosing language and matter; looking for inspiration in nature, science and universal truth. 

MESSAGE

The creation of one’s identity is first subjected to societal norms and expectations. Only upon maturing can one step away from bias and learn to appreciate one’s identity for what it organically is. We showcase Joe’s personal journey of understanding his identity by reversing the chronology of events. The first half of the opera shows the beauty and celebration of self-determination and deals with the curation of the self as something extremely pleasant and benign. The second half introduces the public; first as bystander, then as the antagonist. Inlimis’ issue is not that he lives in the wrong body, but that the public deems him to be living in the wrong body.

Gender Dysphoria is considered the root cause of transgenderism but truly is not the cause, but itself a symptom of a much greater, underlying issue: society’s set of norms and expectations and its inability to disconnect identity from sex-specific, chromosomal make up.

By disconnecting the concept of sex from identity we constitute an injunction to the general public to redirect their focus from the individual’s sex to their identity instead. Hereby we are attempting to alleviate the - not so uncommon - vexation so many transgender-identifying individuals experience in regards to gender reassignment under the pretense of the questionable principle, that identity is tied to the strict duality of the sexes.

Yet this piece does not solely speak about the topic of transgender. The concept is equally applicable to every facet of what is deemed queerness today. We want to dissolve the otherness of the queer community by highlighting the universality and sheer infinite diversity of identity and believe that it is our entire society who must reshape itself to empower people to explore their identities free of what their biological sex is.