Blog 5- Sammy

 I had really conflicting feelings about Parable of the Sower the Opera. I thought Toshi was an amazing performer and the songs were beautiful. The performers were incredibly talented and captivating.

However, it was difficult that so much of the plot/story was lost in the adaptation. I also think that the intensity of the danger and fear was significantly lowered onstage. The biggest difference to me was that, because all of the performers were part of the main group (no outsiders were portrayed), there was a strong sense of togetherness and protection that I don’t think the book ever fully commits to – I found the book to be more cynical in that it doesn’t buy in as much to the idea that if we all band together we will be okay. Maybe a shift in emphasis to an easier goal to conceptualize – working together with the people you know rather than stopping climate change/ government corruption would be an easier tactic to motivate people with, but I think it misses out on the depth of the message. (With the exception being the Toshi song in the middle that brought in current events!)

I think that another place where we can see this tradeoff that performance can lose some of the nuance of written work is in Extinction Rebellion's protest against ecological breakdown (written below). Passers-by that were interviewed understood the emotions that they were trying to convey but not the broader context (I can’t add a link because this is from an article for my other class that isn't up on the internet but I added a citation below)

Lara Stammen and Miriam Meissner (2022): Social movements transformative climate change communication: extinction rebellion’s artivism, Social Movement Studies, DOI: 10.1080/14742837.2022.212294

 communication: extinction rebellion’s artivism, Social Movement Studies, 

DOI: 10.1080/14742837.2022.212294