Studying Greek tragedies about war, it’s been noted, can help contemporary military veterans deal with PTSD. This summer, no less prominent a filmmaker than Christopher Nolan is preparing a new all-star blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” to the big screen.
Theater artist Crystal Manich likewise saw timeless relevance in Sophocles’ drama “Antigone.” Manich, a 2000 Mount Lebanon High School graduate with an international resume, is the librettist and director of “Time to Act,” an opera about the emotional toll of mass shootings that makes its world premiere this week at Pittsburgh Opera.
“Finding common ground”
The new work, with music by nationally known composer Laura Kaminsky, depicts what happens when a mysterious, troubled new student who joins a high school drama club staging “Antigone” proves to have a hidden link to a school shooting elsewhere.
Zach Mendez
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Pittsburgh Opera
Crystal Manich is director and librettist of “Time to Act.”
The heroine of “Antigone” suffers the wrath of Creon, king of Thebes, when she defies his edict to leave her brother, whom the king considers a traitor, unburied. “Time to Act” likewise explores questions of justice and empathy, and tensions between the individual and the group.
“The reconciliation that happens after that is … a metaphor for finding common ground even when we disagree about something,” said Manich. “Finding resolution and empathy in someone else’s situation, even if you don’t understand it.”
The show’s principal cast of five and chorus sing in English to music by a live, six-piece orchestra. The opera gets five performances at the Bitz Opera Factory, in the Strip District, Sat., Feb. 28, through March 8.
Since graduating from Carnegie Mellon University, and early work with Opera Theater Pittsburgh (now Pittsburgh Festival Opera), Manich has done everything from stage directing baroque opera to work with Cirque du Soleil and staging an outdoor circus variety show at the inaugural Luxembourg Biennale, in 2024. She’s also directed many Pittsburgh Opera productions, from “La Bohème” in 2009 to “Madama Butterfly,” “La Traviata” and “Hansel and Gretel.”
She is now based in Puerto Rico, where her parents were born.
Manich said the seed of the new opera was planted by Kostis Protopapas, the artistic and general director of Opera Santa Barbara, who in 2018 suggested a story about “young people at a high school who had gone through a tragedy” like the then-recent Parkland High School shooting, and who would grapple with the aftermath of violence by studying a play like “Antigone.”
Protopapas also later connected Manich to composer Kaminsky, whose 2014 opera “As One” is reportedly the most performed new opera in the U.S. (Pittsburgh Opera staged it in 2017. “Time to Act” was co-commissioned by Pittsburgh Opera, Opera Montana, and Boston Conservatory at Berklee, with additional funding provided by Opera Santa Barbara. The second production will be at Boston Conservatory, in April.)
Centering young people
In the roles of the four students, the world-premiere production here features mezzo-soprano Timothi Williams as the new girl, Alona; baritone Erik Nordstrom as Tyson, an injured football player skeptical about “Antigone”; tenor Logan Wagner as Jose, who’s enthused about the possibilities of art; and soprano Shannon Crowley as Bailey. Baritone Yazid Gray as the drama coach Robin Gray. Manich said eight additional young singers perform as the chorus.
“The show demonstrates how the arts can uplift and unify victims of trauma, empowering them to act, while giving voice to the young citizens who have been most impacted by an ongoing cycle of devastating school violence,” reads Pittsburgh Opera’s press release announcing the production.
Manich herself completed high school in the wake of the April 1999 massacre at Colorado’s Columbine High School, where two 12th-graders shot and killed 13 other students and a teacher before turning their guns on themselves. This month, during the second week of rehearsals for “Time to Act,” 10 people, including six high school students, died in a shooting in British Columbia, and two adults were shot and killed at a youth ice hockey game in Rhode Island.
“I think what we really pride ourselves on in this piece is putting young people at the center of the conversation about what needs to change,” says Manich. “It’s so much more than just about laws that are in place. It’s actually about what is happening in our social psyche in the United States. We resort to violence at any given turn.”
Manich said she believes art can help.
“I want people to understand that historically opera has often been written in response to things happening in current society that we want to shed a light on,” she said. “And I think that that’s what we’re doing here.”