After the successful adaptation of her award-winning play “Intimate Apparel,” Lynn Nottage was eager to collaborate with composer Ricky Ian Gordon on bringing another story to the opera stage.
The Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner and recent Washington University International Humanities Prize recipient has no shortage of plays that would seamlessly transform into opera. Nor does she lack the creative gifts to craft a new one.
But the inciting inspiration that led to their next offering came from the work of another writer. According to Nottage, the playwright’s words sang to her as they leapt from the page and into her imagination. That playwright is her daughter, Ruby Aiyo Gerber.
“The idea for ‘This House’ started with a beautiful play Ruby wrote that I read,” Nottage said. “I felt like it deserved a life beyond a play that would just sit on a computer.”
She thought the play could live even beyond its original intention as a stage drama.
“My daughter Ruby, who is a brilliant writer, has written this play – and I think that it could be an opera,” Nottage said.
She and Gerber pitched Gordon the idea of composing for the libretto they would develop together. On May 31, the life Nottage imagined for her daughter’s play will be fully realized as audiences see the highly anticipated production as a world-premiere for the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis 50th Anniversary season. Directed by James Robinson, among its stars are St. Louis’ own Adrienne Danrich and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis favorite Justin Austin.
“We are experiencing a beautiful moment in opera – there has been this wave of Black operas,” Gerber said. “I think that opera houses were surprised by the success of Black operas, because for so long classical music and opera have discounted Black people – even though so much of modern opera comes from Black sonic traditions. And there is already a tradition [in Black culture] of storytelling through music and the holding of history through music.”
Opera Theatre of Saint Louis has been an ambassador for the telling of diverse stories – including “This House.”
Nottage chimed in with a fact that will not be lost on this cast – or any other Black opera.
“Black opera singers have been some of the greatest singers and yet have not had the opportunity to tell their stories on stage,” she said. “Singers feel such a sense of joy and relief with inhabiting characters that are familiar to them and they can draw on their own resources to tell their stories as opposed to going outside of their body. It is a moment, and hopefully it isn’t a moment that will be fleeting.”
As the title suggests, the story the singers will tell centers around a house that has occupied nearly 100 years of a family legacy. And while “This House” was inspired by the home that was a generational safe haven and launch pad where both Gerber and Nottage grew up, the production is not their family narrative.
“Nothing is straightforward with this opera,” Nottage said. “I think that people are going to be delighted about how many twists and turns – and choices – exist.”
Gerber wrote the play during COVID.
“I was really thinking about home and missing family and also missing my grandfather who I grew up in the house with – which is the same home where she grew up with her father,” Gerber said. “I was just thinking about all of the stories. He grew up in Harlem, where the house is set. It was a lot of imagined pieces, but in a way a telling of our family history – which is why I was so excited to share it with her.”
That gesture ultimately bonded Gerber and Nottage as collaborators. As they worked together on “This House” they both realized the moment was a demonstration of legacy that went beyond the four walls that they shared.
“Having read her work as an adult and now getting to be a collaborator, I can see the way I was raised in her choices,” Gerber said.
Gerber reflected on the lessons she was taught, which she didn’t understand were a part of the creative process until the pair began working together.
“I thought,’ ‘that’s just how I was raised,’” Gerber said. “[But] she was raising me to be a storyteller. And now that I have been collaborating with her, I get to really appreciate that in this new and really beautiful way – and reflect on how she emphasized that in my childhood.”
The treasures with respect to wisdom and creative practice Gerber absorbed from Nottage have yielded residuals that have extended beyond the mutual joy of creating together.
“There are things that I have learned from Ruby, because she interrogates my practice in ways that I am not capable of doing,” Nottage said. “Because she is from a different generation and she sees the world in her own very special and unique way.”
They personify what they hope audiences take away from “This House.”
“I think the beautiful thing that this work does is that it brings all of this legacy – and it ends with the note of possibility of the future of a next generation,” Gerber said. “We want people to know that there can be a future – and possibility – while remembering the past. They don’t have to live separately.”
Opera Theatre of Saint Louis’ world-premiere of “This House” will open on May 31st as part of their 50th Anniversary Season at The Loretto-Hilton. For the full season lineup as well as dates and showtimes for “This House” visit https://opera-stl.org or call 314.961.0171.
Living It content is produced with funding by the ARPA for the Arts grants program in partnership with the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis and the Community Development Administration.
