PREMIERE FOLK OPERA: Pascagoula

BRASS TACKS:
I need your support to mount a production of my passion project, Pascagoula. I've researched it and written it over the past two years and it's ready to be seen and heard- it's intensely personal to my family history and infused with my love of Appalachian folk and Mississippi blues. 

UPDATE 6/6/19: 
-Thanks to a very successful fundraiser at Atlas Arts Media I am so pleased to say that I can confidently book a venue and begin assembling my production team and cast! We have a long way to go so that this production can be everything I want it to be, but as of right now I can afford rehearsals, performance space, and pay my pit. Let's keep going!


As a longtime lover and supporter of folk music, I have been hoping to compose a folk opera for some time now. I pitched the idea to our founder, Daniel Grambow, and soon learned of his own history touring the United States with a folk band and his love for the sound and history of folk music. Together, we decided to adapt the 1904 opera Madama Butterfly, the story of a Japanese geisha who marries an American naval officer and trusts him too deeply, following him to her demise. It has been adapted into other plays and the hit musical Miss Saigon, but we want to adapt it into a folk opera taking place in Pascagoula, Mississippi. There are many tall tales and legends along the Mississippi River, but while doing research I came across the legend of the Singing River. The legend goes that the Pascagoula tribe’s chieftain was in love with a Biloxi princess, who was betrothed to a Biloxi chieftain. The Biloxi and Pascagoula fought, and when it became clear that the Pascagoula tribe were going to lose, they were led by the women and children into the Pascagoula river, singing a death chant. As soon as I read this, I knew that I wanted to enrich the story of Madama Butterfly with the history of Mississippi’s indigenous people by making the heroine a native woman.



 We traveled to Pearl River in March of 2017 to meet with some folks over at the headquarters for the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and discuss the origins of this American folk tale. So far we have traced it to the Pascagoula Native Americans, who geography tells us are most likely ancestors of the present day Mississippi Band of Choctaw. While there, I met with their Princess, had a meeting with the Education Outreach director at the Chahta Immi Cultural Center and had a conversation as we toured the museum. 



We drove down the next day to Pascagoula where we stayed on the haunted river itself, met with a historian in Mississippi's oldest standing structure, the Lepointe-Krebs museum, which had its own literature and exhibition on the Legend of the Singing River. 




To return for a moment to the story of Madama Butterfly, it has themes of white ignorance and overconfidence, and of the reckless discarding of tradition. The history of America itself relies on this, and most recently, our new President of the United States has already made it clear that his only currency is self-gain. This story is a warning of the result of that selfishness, one in which we hope to promote the power, history, and suffering of indigenous peoples in the retelling of a heart wrenching narrative.


The research continues, the collaboration is in motion; we want to listen more than we talk and capture this very important story into an original folk opera. 


Where is my money going?

If we reach...

$600:
-Two full shows in a 50-100 seat theatre
-Paid musicians and technicians
-Basic costume and prop design
-Singers receive a stipend 

$800, we add:

$1000:

$1200:


$2000:

If we reach our top goal of $2000, every artist and technician involved will be paid! No depending on stipends, no needing a full house at every show- just a production where I can make sure my whole team's time is valued fiscally. 

Most importantly, by hitting the goal we get to tell this story that I've been researching, writing, and loving for two years and do it justice. I will keep chasing the dream of funding it fully, and that's possible with your donations. 

If you made it all the way down here, thank you for taking the time to read about my project! I hope you'll help me bring this incredible original folk opera to life.