Blogging GALA: Part Two

My first assignment as a GALA "backstage" volunteer was, I was told initially, to help escort singers for a morning "coffee concert" from their warmup room to the stage where they would be performing. The job was essentially one of making sure they didn't leave anything in the warmup space, that they got to where they needed to be when they needed to be there, and that they lined up in the backstage corridor in a manner that would facilitate their orderly entrance onto the risers already set up on stage.

Except, as it turned out, there was no coffee concert schedule that early on Thursday. There was, however, a program called "Engagement Through Songs and Stories," comprising two presentations that two different choruses give at schools in their home states.

That sounded fine, too.

"Thanks for being flexible," said the coordinator who had ushered myself and another early-morning volunteer around and explained our duties to us.

Flexibility is essential in any sort of volunteer work. Indeed, the way the nondescript hospitality spaces of the Minneapolis Convention Center seemed to fit uneasily with the equipment needed for the festival – long tables equipped with laptops and mixing boards; clipboard-bearing crew members darting around at the edges of performance spaces and industrial-looking areas behind the scenes – reminded me of volunteering for the Boston Marathon. Thousands of people – audience members, singers, conductors, musicians – would soon be in a state of flux that would last throughout the day and well into the night, surging and ebbing through the auditoriums and corridors like a living tide, sweeping from one space to the next to make, and enjoy, music. It's a complex and continually evolving situation, and the best bet is simply to embrace it moment by moment and enjoy it for what it is.

The Phoenix, Colorado's Trans Community Choir, from Phoenix, Colorado, performed first, taking the stage with a 25-minute musical play that made the experience of transgender youth accessible for uncomprehending adults as well as students that might not understand or have any empathy for their trans peers. The play, titled "Raven's True Identity," follows Raven, a transgender bird that all the animals in the forest mistake for female based solely on his physical appearance. But while those looking in at him have assigned Raven one gender, the young Corvus knows deep within himself, and with utter certainty, that he is male.

After the show, one of the performers – Sam, dressed as a snake – spoke about the history of the piece. It had originally been written by the parent of a transgender student, with the intention being that the sketch could be performed in the classroom. The teacher, who initially supported the project, axed it as soon as she understood the topic was transgender youth.

But that wasn't the end of the story. The parent collaborated with the chorus to develop the play further, and the chorus began to present productions (with costumes and songs) in schools. Now came the pushback: A small group of parents began to spread misinformation about the piece without knowing anything about it – one of their stories, Sam said, had been that the play was about a bird getting "transgender surgery." (As is true in real life, where surgical intervention is extremely rare when it comes to trans children, no birds were subjected to surgery.)

"The press was initially skeptical of us," Sam related, "but then they saw the show and realized it's fine, it's age appropriate." News coverage quickly became supportive.

Moms for Liberty got involved, claiming that the problem wasn't the material itself, but rather their rights as parents. "They said 'We're minorities, we need to be protected'," Sam recounted.

Things got even more bizarre when a right-wing politician named Heidi Gnaahl started claiming that the play was "woke," and campaigning on that story. (Ganahl was handily defeated by incumbent, and openly gay politician, Gov. Jared Polis.)

It was an uphill battle – and remains so – but "Raven's True Identity" still plays to elementary schools in Colorado and has even begun to travel to other states. May Raven keep on stretching his wings!

The second act was brought to the stage by the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus' RHYTHM – Reaching Youth Through Music – a program of songs themed to LGBTQ+ understanding and acceptance that members of the SFGMC bring to Bay Area high schools. Personal stories from the group's members wove through the setlist, including the heart-rending story shared by one young man about how, as a queer child unsure about coming out, he had seen his parents react to his older sibling's announcement that she was transgender by throwing her out of the house at age 13 and then, in conversations with people from outside the household "pretending that they didn't have another child.

"I didn't want to be erased like that," the singer told the audience.

Eventually the family rift was healed, and both the singer and his sister were accepted by their parents, but not before trauma had been dealt out to the children, who had to learn to endure it.

A youth chorus joined the singers from SFGMC for the rousing final number of the brief set, prompting – as the musical play had done – a standing ovation.

Chatting with the conductor of the RHYTHM presentation, SFGMC's Associate Director of Music Education and Outreach, Mitch Galli, explained how he personalizes each appearance at the various schools by doing a pre-performance survey in which he invites (but does not require) queer students to come out anonymously. He asks all the students to write down something they hope for and selects out the hopes of the queer kids for incorporation into the show. In the performance we had just witnessed, the hopes expressed had been heartbreakingly earnest: "I hope my family can accept me." "I hope for a solution to school shootings." "I hope I live."

"It's fully anonymous," Mitch said of the process of selecting the hopes he includes in the presentations, "and I have to be sure to only choose ones that are not going to out a student, so if there's something that's very specific-sounding, I won't include it." This was something he did out of a sense of responsibility, and to ensure that the students who revealed themselves to him felt safe, but also heard.

"I want people to always know that they have safety in this program and that we want to celebrate them," Mitch said, "but also go at their own speed."