Patty Roache Dreams of Chaos
On nuanced queer representation, re-envisioning opera, and the importance of being seen.
Dreams of Chaos is a series of Q&As with folks who are engaging with chaos in their work. Sometimes that means they love the chaos and use it as an engine for creativity. Sometimes it means they struggle with the chaos and are trying to harness it in whatever way they can. I’m interested in the ways in which we, as people, acknowledge the messiness of living in the world. And I’m excited to share conversations with those are thinking about this as well.
A month or so ago I was looking for work, as one does when one is a full-time freelancer and never knows where the heck one’s next paycheck will come from, when I saw something I couldn’t resist. An editor at a Michigan based publication, Pride Source, was looking for someone both queer and opera-savvy to write a piece quickly.
“Oh my goodness, that’s me!” I thought, tripping over my own fingers as I attempted to write a convincing email as quickly as possible.
I sang opera all through high school in a very intense bootcamp-style program run by the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. Then I got a bachelor’s in classical composition and conducting from Berklee College of Music. And I am queer. And it is very rare that I get to connect those two parts of myself.
That email resulted in an article about a new, very genderqueer rendition of a modern opera called Ainadamar that brings together the languages of flamenco and classical Western music tells the story of Federico García Lorca. Then, a few months later, the same editor reached out to see if I was up for another queer opera article.
Folks, I love being the go-to gay opera person. Of course I said yes immediately!
Through this new project, I found myself having an enthralling conversation with the librettist behind D[x]n Pasquale, a gender-bending and deeply queer take on Donizetti’s classic 1842 opera, on tour now throughout Michigan.
Every word of this conversation was so powerful — Roache’s take on the importance of nuance in queer representation, the idea of re-imagining classical art as a way of redemption and liberation, and the spirit of fun behind it all — that I had to share it with you all. It was very clear throughout our chat that they are something of a visionary who has found their way into the company of like-minded creatives who, together, may just change the way in which many folks get to experience opera. Below is our conversation, edited for clarity and length.
So, how did you first encounter Opera MODO and get involved in the company’s work?
Well, I have a background in musical theater — I got my BFA in acting from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Around the time I started college, MODO had been in Detroit for about two or three years, and as it happened, I found myself taking voice lessons from Danielle [Wright], MODO’s artistic director while in school. Danielle is phenomenal. They’re just like a G-d of the voice.
After a while, they asked me and some other friends they were teaching to come be a part of a similar production, a femme empowering English adaptation of Rossini's la Cenerentola. The original is a Cinderella story, but here Cinderella goes to the mat [and fights for what she deserves]. It took place in someone’s warehouse mansion which had been customized for the performance. It sounded so cool, so I agreed to be in the chorus, not knowing it would show me how this art form can be so many incredible things. It's like Shakespeare, you know? We have this whole realm of classic pieces that are really like pieces of clay waiting to be molded for the next generation. You just have to choose to mold it.
After that initial intro, I didn't touch opera for a while. I lived in New York, auditioning for Broadway and all that. Then, right before the pandemic, I moved back to Detroit and reconnected with Danielle. And that's when they asked me to take on a more active role in helping MODO adapt and tell this new story.
Wow. It’s pretty wild that your first experience with opera was this new, radical imagining of the form. Do you think that made you more open-minded in your approach when working on the adaptation?
So, a lot of opera can get a pretty bad rap for being stuffy, or dated and gendered, even racist. Opera MODO is very intentional about breaking down all of those stereotypes and transcending those boundaries, especially when it comes to providing accessible paid opportunities to young singers, who in many other cases may have to pay to perform elsewhere.
Also, we're really focused on finding new ways to present old stories and [Donizetti’s] Don Pasquale is kind of the ultimate example of this idea. We took this traditional opera that's pretty stodgy and features really stock stereotyped characters and found a potent, powerful queer story within that. That's what we're all about — I was very clear-eyed about that from the beginning of the project. I think it was MODO’s openness that gave me the agency to go where I wanted with the D[x]n Pasquale adaptation.
That makes sense. So, how did you approach the project?
We started with the idea of a family member who doesn't like the person their dependent family member wants to marry. Right away, I thought, “Yes, that's a really real experience many queer folks have.” But I'm non-binary, and there were a lot of gender requirements baked into that initial idea. I felt I couldn’t connect to those binary ideas from my own experience. So, we turned it into a story about a family member trying to disenfranchise their dependent family member because they have a genderqueer identity they don't understand. A lot of the story came from my own experience; there's a lot of my queer identity in this.
It was important to me that the story should genuinely capture a lot of my own experiences, that the characters should feel accessible and real — I feel confident we’ve achieved that.
Other focal points have stemmed from my own queer interests and explorations over time. It’s been such a beautiful opportunity to have a platform to explore those things. I did a lot of research on topics like polyamory, BDSM, and kink identities, specifically working with the IDC (Intimacy Directors and Coordinators) education group. They had some really awesome Zoom sessions with a BDSM-kink psychologist. It was so cool.
I was thinking about how BDSM can get stigmatized in stage presentations, how it gets reduced into an inauthentic exploration. So, when working with how these ideas fit into our story, I was asking myself about the specific details for the kink identities of these characters. How does this specifically work for them? I wanted to present risk-aware, consensual kink. So, one of the characters — Norina — moonlights as a dominatrix. She has some serious Dom energy, but she is a caring and loving Dom who really enjoys giving pleasure, making sure her submissives are taken care of. She also enjoys seeing how they react, though. Throughout the whole adaptation process, I wanted to be sure I was getting as specific as possible with these characters to make them authentic queer identities, instead of just general queer identities.
Any queer person can come to this opera and think, “Oh, wow, I really identify with that aspect of that character,” but no character is trying to be a catchall. You’re not going to identify with anyone 100% because I've not found that accurate in my own experiences with my queer friends and family. Sure, we can have a lot of similarities. But there are always the pieces that are so uniquely mine. I wanted the characters in this to have pieces that were so uniquely theirs.
There's a lot of redemption in this show. And there's a lot of hard lessons. But there's a lot of really stupid fun, too. I love camp, so there’s a lot of campiness in this. A lot of the times when I was writing stuff, I would think, “Is that dumb? Yeah? Okay, perfect. Great.”
Oof. That’s so gorgeous and fun. How has the audience received the performance so far?
You know, we've talked about the gatekeeping behind opera, or ballet, or other traditional art forms, right? Well, we now have the opportunity to take these pieces and to make new art with them. I hope that that's what the original creators of these pieces always wanted. I love to think about how so many of these creators were also pushing boundaries and breaking rules, in their own way, when they were writing these works. And now we get to do that, too. We can tell stories that are relevant to the people that we love and the communities we want to represent. We can allow them the opportunity to be seen in ways they may never have thought they might be. Yeah, I think that's why this representation is so important.
When we had our premiere performance last year it went awesome. I mean, so much of the feedback from the audience was… it could make me cry, honestly. I had several beautiful conversations with people who told me this was the first time that they'd seen pieces of their identity put on stage and felt safe seeing those things. They knew they were in a space that was celebrating them. To me, that's the point.
What role does community play in Opera MODO’s ethos?
I think when it comes to community, there are two sides to it, right? There's the Detroit community, the people who are at our front doorstep, who we explicitly want to engage with. To that end, we have a lot of relationships with other small business owners. They know who we are, they're excited to see what we do next, it’s a partnership.
When it comes to the queer community this is a hard question to answer because queer community is at the core of everything we do. In producing these reimagined, innovative operas and musicals — we broke into musical theater a couple years ago, too — we're always creating intimate performances, where the audience is pretty close by. With opera you don't usually get that intimacy, because opera singers are way over there so their voices don’t hit you in the face.
But we like to come up to our community with these voices and invite them in. Each performance is a little bit of a party. We want our people to come to us and have a good time, to be so energized. We usually include drink tickets with admission, so everyone can have some wine at intermission. The goal is to create spaces where before, during, and after a performance people will organically be talking, engaging, laughing, holding one another, and holding space for for the catharsis that has happened.
D[x]n Pasquale is the Pride party I want. Some parts of [the opera] are really hard; there are clear moments of the story where you see hateful people hurting queer people. But you also see the queer people banding together, and defending one another, and demanding space, and getting the love and affirmation they deserve.
We’ve really been able to put on a show with so many fun, raucous elements that capture the essence of a Pride event and still tell a story including some of the struggles we continue to face. But here's a story where you win, where you come out on top.
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Patty Roache is an interdisciplinary artist from Detroit, MI. Their industry experience includes musical theater, Shakespeare, Opera, new works, two summers of training at the Moscow Art Theatre School (MXAT), aerial acrobatics, Droznin movement, drag, ballroom dance, and light intimacy/fight. Their artistry is influenced by their queer experiences. In claiming their space as a trans and nonbinary icon human, they have developed an acute awareness for how to make and hold space for individuals from all backgrounds and experiences — both onstage and off. Follow them and see their work at here.