Parable of the Sower - from Octavia Butler's Novel to Extraordinary Musical

 

Some of the Cast in The Parable of the Sower Credit: Courtesy Photo

What a great sense of satisfaction it is when something you’ve experienced exceeds your expectations. Excessive hype can sometimes lead to the malaise of disappointment. As T. S . Elliot once perceptively wrote “Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act, falls the shadow.

    Skeptical when I read the description of  Pittsburgh Playhouse's description of Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower, redone as an "opera" by Toshi and Bernice Johnson Reagon's, I thought it was just another PR ploy to get people to buy tickets.

    The musical "is a triumphant, mesmerizing work of rare power and beauty that illuminates deep insights on gender, race, and the future of human civilization," it began. It ends with ”This fully-staged congregational opera brings together over 30 original anthems drawn from 200 years of Black music to recreate Octavia Butler’s sci-fi, Afrofuturist masterpiece live on stage."

    Willing to give the performance a chance to beguile me, I entered the theater with an open mind. A nearly bare stage with little in the way of props or scenery didn’t send up any red flags. I’d been to plays with similar bare bone elements before and mostly found them very engaging and dramatically meaningful.

    With a cast of around 15 mighty singers backed up by a virtuosic sextet, the nearly 2-½ hour long, intermission-less musical marathon includes Toshi Reagon, who wrote the music and lyrics with her mother, Bernice, on acoustic guitar and vocals.

    I was absolutely amazed by the genre defying range of musical styles in the Reagons’ melange of rock, Gospel, blues, soul and more that went into the mix. To keep each song fresh and unique, interesting and varied, for the almost entirely sung through performance borders, in my mind, on genius. But it happened.

    Octavia Butler wrote her dystopian novel “The Parable of the Sower, ”in 1993 and sets it in 2024, a factor that makes it not only timely but alarming considering how “right now” it feels. Many of the issues she explores, like climate change, violence and environmental degradation are part and parcel of the daily news.

    Quite frankly, the potent musical has to be one of the theatrical highlights of the still new year. It’s a shame the 4-day run was so short, and yes, I’d say the performance and experience lived up to its hype.