At its best, art not only entertains but makes us think -- and that's what the creators of The Source, an opera about Chelsea Manning and her leak of confidential government information, wish to do.
"The piece is about asking how we can process this massive amount of information ... how we deal with war," says composer Ted Hearne. It's also asking audiences to consider what Manning, while in the U.S. Army, was feeling as she was reading the information and sharing it, all as she was confronting questions about her own identity, which eventually led her to come out as a transgender woman.
The Source was first performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York in 2014, and it will have its West Coast premiere and only its second production ever this week in Los Angeles, under the auspices of L.A. Opera and Beth Morrison Projects. It's slated to be staged at the San Francisco Opera in February as well.
It is by no means a conventional opera. Hearne's music is not in the classical tradition, instead showing influences of jazz, pop, and electronica. Mark Doten's libretto is drawn from the documents Manning shared, largely in 2009 and 2010, concerning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; her online chats with hacker Adrian Lamo, which were published in Wired magazine; media coverage of the leaks; and other primary sources. The staging by director Daniel Fish and production designer Jim Findlay includes video of people reacting to one of Manning's revelations -- that Reuters journalists were killed in a 2007 U.S. air strike because of the military's mistaken belief that they were Iraqi insurgents. Four performers speak and sing the libretto, backed by a seven-piece instrumental ensemble.
When Hearne learned about WikiLeaks, the website that published documents provided by Manning, he had an idea for a piece dealing musically with the culture of digital information-sharing. Then, when Manning was identified as the source, he decided to make her activities the focus. He contacted Doten, whom he had met at an artists' colony, and then Fish came on board through Morrison. They set to work on The Source, along with Findlay.
All the members of the creative team stress that they want The Source to be thought-provoking. "It's hard for us to get our minds around what happened over there" in Iraq and Afghanistan," says Doten. "It's incumbent on all citizens to understand what our government and military are engaged in."
But the work is not intended to tell people what to think, they say. "It doesn't seem to me like that's the job of art," Hearne says. Fish adds, "The piece is designed so it has its own meaning for everyone."
The creators are all sympathetic, though, to Manning, who is serving a 35-year sentence in a military prison for the leaks. "She's a very inspiring figure to me," says Hearne. Doten notes, "If I ran the world, she certainly would not be in prison."
From left: Ted Hearne, Daniel Fish, and Mark Doten
The Source deals with Manning's transgender identity but does not reduce her to it, Hearne says. "The piece is very much about identity," he says, adding that Manning was in crisis about her gender identity when she leaked the documents. "We tried to explore the tyranny of the binaries" -- not just regarding gender, but political issues, musical genres, and more, he explains.
Hearne and Fish, both straight, cisgender men, are LGBT allies; Doten, who is gay and also cisgender, says that while he doesn't presume to speak for trans people, he feels an affinity with Manning. "Her alienation and displacement growing up are something I can relate to," Doten says. They don't know if Manning has any reaction to their production, if she is even aware of it. But when they were developing it, Hearne and Doten attended Manning's preliminary hearing in military court, which Doten calls an "affecting experience."
All three men have had distinguished careers. Hearne's other works include Katrina Ballads, a prize-winning oratorio dealing with the effects of the hurricane, and Law of Mosaics, a 30-minute piece for string orchestra that has been performed by the Chicago and San Francisco symphonies. Doten published his first novel, The Infernal, in 2015, and he's working on a second one that he says is about "the history of the internet and the end of the world." He's also fiction editor at Soho Press in Brooklyn. Fish has directed a wide variety of productions, such as Who Left This Fork Here, which is an interdisciplinary work inspired by Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters, and an intimate staging of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! that had the audience sitting at picnic tables surrounding the performers.
They are very gratified that The Source is reaching new audiences. "I'm thrilled that it's been picked up outside of BAM," Hearne says. Doten adds, "I feel just very fortunate that Ted had selected me to collaborate with him. And Fish puts in, "I love the piece. We're all very proud of it."
The Source will be performed October 19-23 at REDCAT in downtown Los Angeles; check here for tickets and more information. Info on the San Francisco production is here. And for those who can't get to either city, the opera is available on CD.
