Today we’d like to introduce you to Nora Maynard.
Nora, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Whole Tone Opera would never have gotten started if it hadn’t been for Fresh Squeezed Opera in NYC, headed by Jillian Flexner and Maggie Roscoe, the original creators of La Zombiata in 2014. The audacity of their pursuit in composing, producing, directing, and performing in this show both astounded and inspired me. While covering the role of Philonia the Ravenous, I learned what it felt like to be artistically driven to bring an operatic production to life. It turns out that romantic comedy horror opera is a micro genre I truly crave; the sort that creates a venn diagram of multiple fandoms at once. After the NYC premiere of La Zombiata, there had been some talks of FSO producing the same show again in Boston but plans for their new shows in NYC manifested too quickly for that to become a reality. In the meantime, I had already roped many of my talented friends and colleagues into becoming the team I would need to build the next rendition of La Zombiata. Just to name a few, Rachel Stevens (producer), Helen McCarthy (scenic designer), Ida Aronson (lighting designer), J. Deschene (stage director), and E. Rosser (costume designer), all enthusiastically agreed to jump on board. Rachel has moved on to less theatrical pursuits, but Rosser, Helen, Ida, and J. have continued to bring their indispensable artistry to multiple WTO productions. It was J’s interpretation of the script that brought La Zombiata 2016 into the realm of queerness, establishing the zombie horde as a casually pansexual polycule. This served to hone the WTO niche even more tightly into *queer* romantic comedy horror opera. As you may have seen in our show last Halloween, The Werewolf: A Fiercely Queer Opera, we have embraced this new identity wholeheartedly. Along with Sara Haugland, producer, we have also decided to continue our trend of mounting shows that are composed by and featuring female, femme, and/or non-binary gendered artists. La Zombiata 2018 is stranger and queerer than ever, and the WTO team is growing ever stronger with outrageous female, femme, and non-binary badasses.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The road has certainly not been perfectly smooth. There were days where the road was dangerously slippery due to jello brains flying about! Last minute brains recipes aside, there have been many other challenges. WTO is a small independent opera company formed solely by independent artists in the Boston area, without financial backing of any kind. For now, we are just flying by the seat of our pants and our community’s willingness to contribute to our crowdfunding campaigns. This means that publicity for each show is always a challenge! It sends all of us producers into panic mode when too many tickets are still available during tech week, and I’m not sure my nervous system can take that kind of a strain too many more times. We are really dedicated to paying all our artists & crew, in a genre where many local companies ask artists to volunteer their services entirely. We will be working to secure a grant for our next production, an opera about Cthulu, climate change, and consent, so that the financial hurdle won’t be quite so oppressive.
WholeTone Opera – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
I’m very proud of my WTO team and our mission! We specialize in the absurdly specific niche of queer romantic comedy horror opera. I adore theatre that performs a sort of cultural acupuncture, mashing up genres in a way that refreshes each realm while also taking pride in the attributes and values that make each of them fascinating. Shows of this nature can draw in audiences that otherwise would never have experienced the magic of operatic singing. I’d say we are known for getting people in the door to see an opera who otherwise might not consider the genre accessible to them. Also, all our shows feature female, femme, and non-binary professional artists at all levels of production from composition to characterization. It seems strange to me that this would be a progressive act but considering the pronounced imbalance of who is employed on and behind the operatic stage, we consider it a necessary step towards balancing gender ratios in the operatic world.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
My proudest moment was probably when I heard that a friend of a friend had decided to move to the Boston area after experiencing the amazing community that turned out for The Werewolf last Halloween, closely seconded to learning that we had sold out all our shows for our first production of La Zombiata.
Pricing:
- Student Tickets: $18
- General Admission: $28
- VIP Splash Zone: $36
- GA Ticket + Dinner at Saloon preshow: $52
Contact Info:
- Address: The Rockwell, 255 Elm St, Somerville, 02144
- Website: www.wholetoneopera.com
- Email: wholetoneopera@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/surefirecure/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wholetoneopera/
- Other: https://www.gofundme.com/LaZombiata2018
Image Credit:
Jeremy Ayers Photography
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