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Apples to apples.
This week I saw two different theater productions about queer black men in America that experimented with formal structure and style of the capabilities of live theater, and while that's not a lot, it's notable that it's happened twice.
Fat Ham the play wasn't as much of an artistic success for me as Champion the opera, largely because the Fat Ham began as a riff on Hamlet and shifted into a post-modern fourth-wall vaporizing piece that was more interested in talking about narrative conventions than in doing much of anything with them - having characters say "we should be dying right now because this is a tragedy" before shrugging and going on with their lives doesn't offer up much to come back to, or a whole lot of back and forth conversation between the contemporary play and the historic inspiration.
By contrast, Champion had more emotional commitment throughout. There were points where people who'd made unforgivable choices were given space to explain why they'd made those choices, with the audience never being asked to forgive them, but to understand why they were in a position that they had to make those choices to begin with. There were also points where the conventions of opera were ignored and choices like using a jazz quartet as the backbone of the composition were made instead, because that strengthened the final artistic production.
All in all, I remain steadfast in my preference for genuine sincerity.
Fat Ham the play wasn't as much of an artistic success for me as Champion the opera, largely because the Fat Ham began as a riff on Hamlet and shifted into a post-modern fourth-wall vaporizing piece that was more interested in talking about narrative conventions than in doing much of anything with them - having characters say "we should be dying right now because this is a tragedy" before shrugging and going on with their lives doesn't offer up much to come back to, or a whole lot of back and forth conversation between the contemporary play and the historic inspiration.
By contrast, Champion had more emotional commitment throughout. There were points where people who'd made unforgivable choices were given space to explain why they'd made those choices, with the audience never being asked to forgive them, but to understand why they were in a position that they had to make those choices to begin with. There were also points where the conventions of opera were ignored and choices like using a jazz quartet as the backbone of the composition were made instead, because that strengthened the final artistic production.
All in all, I remain steadfast in my preference for genuine sincerity.