Blythe Gaissert and Michael Kelley as Hannah After and Hannah Before in a November 2019 production of "As One" from Opera Columbus. (credit: Terry Gilliam)
Blythe Gaissert and Michael Kelley as Hannah After and Hannah Before in a November 2019 production of "As One" from Opera Columbus. (credit: Terry Gilliam)

The Atlanta Opera defies culture of hate with Come As You Are Festival productions at Pullman Yards

Mark Gresham | 30 MAY 2022

He drew a circle that shut me out—
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!

~Edwin Markham

Whenever I draw a circle, I immediately want to step out of it.

~R. Buckminster Fuller

The Atlanta Opera will wrap up its 2021-22 season in June with its Come As You Are Festival beginning this Thursday, June 2, and running through Sunday, June 19, at the historic Pullman Yards facilities in Atlanta’s eastside Kirkwood neighborhood.

The festival features a new production of the hit musical Cabaret performed in repertoire with critically-acclaimed chamber opera As One. On Saturday, June 18, the company will round out its musical offerings with a cabaret-style matinee concert featuring tenor Jay Hunter Morris.

The company built the new Come As You Are Festival on the framework of its successful Discoveries Series and its decade-long experience bringing adventurous chamber opera to unusual alternative locations throughout Atlanta. Prior to returning to its home stage at Cobb Energy Center this season, the company devised an innovative Big Tent venue to make outdoor performances with a live audience safe and viable during the pandemic, winning international acclaim for its efforts.

In a recent phone conversation about the Festival, Atlanta Opera general and artistic director Tomer Zvulun had this to say:

Tomer Zvulun: The Discoveries Series has been exploring different alternative spaces for the past decade, taking us all over the city. We’ve been developing expertise in doing shows in unusual places, from The Secret Gardener at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens, Yardbird and Maria de Buenos Aires in the converted Le Maison Rouge lounge at Paris on Ponce, to Pagliacci in a circus tent on a college baseball field.
Tomer Zvulun (courtesy of The Atlanta Opera)

Tomer Zvulun (courtesy of
The Atlanta Opera)

Pullman Yards presents an incredible opportunity because it has unique early twentieth-century train depot warehouses that had been deserted for a while and are now enjoying a kind of renaissance. As we were thinking about finding a location for Cabaret, it made a lot of sense to take a place like that warehouse space and convert it into the Kit Kat Klub.
If you look at the Berlin, New York, or Tel Aviv clubs, they’re not at places like the Woodruff Arts Center or Lincoln Center. They are in the most unexpected places, and to me, that’s Pullman Yards. I think it will be a surprisingly delightful event for the audience.

However, the selection of a venue is hardly isolated only to location or even interest-provoking architecture. More important: Is it also a good match for the particular shows and their overarching themes? Zvulun talks about the Festival’s underlying premise:

TZ: The thematic reason or premise behind presenting each of these shows is the idea of “anti-hate.”
I’m very concerned about the state of the world, and every day there are news stories that show how dangerous it is to have unchecked hate in the world. It happens in America, it occurs worldwide, and it’s not the first time in history. From what’s happening in Ukraine right now, where one nation feels that the other nation should not have a right to exist, to shootings in schools or shootings in a supermarket where some white supremacist thinks he has the right to hate the other and act on it. Both shows have anti-hate themes. What happens to a society like Germany in the 1930s, where Jews and Gays were persecuted and executed? Or today, where a transgender person faces the hurdles of a society that does not accept them? That’s the premise of the festival.
One of the costume designs for Sally Bowles in "Cabaret. "(credit: Erik Teague)

One of the costume designs for Sally Bowles in “Cabaret. “(credit: Erik Teague)

The setting of Cabaret is the Berlin of a decadent, troubled Weimar Republic of early 1930s Germany during the twilight of the Jazz Age, just as the Nazis are ascending to power. If you are only familiar with the movie, you might be in for a surprise or two because the stage musical that the film is based upon has some differences and perhaps a little more bite to it. I asked Zvulun if he thought there was really all that much difference between them.

TZ: Definitely. The film is great, but it doesn’t have many of the characters that are in the show itself. It doesn’t have all the domestic scenes between Frau Schneider and Herr Schultz, which is critical. I think the stage version is a masterpiece. We’re doing the 1998 version, which is terrific.

Cabaret is quite a show with plenty of hit songs. Due to its broad fame and popularity, The Atlanta Opera presents eight performances in all during the festival.

A far more modest production, requiring only two singers and a string quartet to perform, As One, a chamber opera that tells the coming-of-age story of Hannah, a transgender woman, will receive two performances in its Atlanta premiere. But size has played no factor in the critical acclaim it has received nor the remarkable number of presentations achieved since it debuted.

TZ: As One has become the most popular new opera in America over the past seven years. It was written in 2014 and has been performed in 50 different cities. Think about it: 50 different cities. I don’t know another new opera that is more popular.
It’s a good piece, well-written by Laura Kaminsky, Mark Campbell, and Kimberly Reed, and it has a powerful theme. It’s also very timely—a winning combination. The music is terrific. The story is emotionally moving and very important to tell.

Zvulun sums up his philosophy about the Discoveries Series, and the 2021-22 season-ending Come As You Are Festival, this way:

TZ: I think the point that we’re making, and that I’m making as a leader of an opera company, is challenging people’s expectations by thinking outside of the box. It’s not because we don’t value and revere the operatic traditions. We’re doing a lot of traditional operas. But it takes us into something even more fundamental about this 400-year-old art form: opera has always defied convention when it comes to revealing the truth. And it can be political, social, or psychological.
Opera takes us into the human heart and has a shocking level of clarity and poignancy when done well. So if we can do that by staging new productions in the ruins of a 20th-century industry, I say: Why not? It’s incredibly invigorating for the company to stretch beyond the Cobb Energy Center. The Discoveries Series has been so successful and is fundamental to everything we do. It’s an opportunity for us to be outside of the ivory tower of the operatic proscenium theater, and we love it. It’s challenging, but it’s also an opportunity for growth. ■

The Atlanta Opera will perform Cabaret June 2, 3, 5, 10, 12(matiinee), 16, 17, & 19(matinee), and As One on June 9 & 11(matinee), both at Pullman Yards, plus a one-time concert, An Afternoon Cabaret with Jay Hunter Morris, on Saturday, June 18 at 2pm, also at Pullman Yards. On June 13

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Mark Gresham

Mark Gresham is publisher and principal writer of EarRelevant. he began writing as a music journalist over 30 years ago, but has been a composer of music much longer than that. He was the winner of an ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for music journalism in 2003.