How to Survive the Apocalypse: A Burning Opera
If you’ve never been to Burning Man, the self-described "annual art event and temporary community based on radical self expression and self-reliance in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada," then A Burning Opera: How to Survive the Apocalypse, currently playing in San Francisco at Teatro Zinzanni, offers a vivid sampling of the festival without having to put up with blistering heat, dust and discomfort. And while the opera may quite not provide the transformative experience for audience members that it claims is to be had at the festival, it certainly provides an evening of thought-provoking, visually delicious, and musically rich entertainment.
Assembled by an impressive group of collaborators, including journalist and culture critic Erik Davis who wrote the libretto, and composer and musical director Mark Nichols, the opera follows the journey of three first-time attendees.
The festival-goers encounter the challenges of dust storms, bad acid trips, and conflicts among festival goers, including an incident in which a male photographer is rightfully admonished after taking photographs of a partially clothed female attendee without her permission.
The three newbies also experience the delights of sexual self-discovery, and the consciousness makeover that comes from leaving behind the strictures of conventional society to spend time in a place where nonconformity and freakishness is celebrated and revered.
Along the way, the trio also meet key personalities of the festival and learn about critical moments in its history: its initial birth at Baker Beach in San Francisco; the reasons behind its transference to the Nevada desert; its crisis year of 1996 when a death, serious injuries, and generalized chaos, resulted in a split between the event’s two original organizers and threatened its survival.
All this is accomplished through a performance that is a sensory feast of imaginative staging, accomplished vocals, and music that interweaves rock with opera, vaudeville and cabaret. The show starts from the moment you enter the theater when the 40-plus cast members in costumes that include glittering top hats, fishnet stockings, rabbit outfits, short-shorts, and pasties-help audience members find their seats and mingle until the band strikes up its first notes.
Unlike the usual five-course meal that accompanies most of Teatro Zinzanni’s performances, audience members at A Burning Opera are offered a limited menu of hors d’oeuvres and sandwich-type snacks. Drinks, including wine and beer, are served throughout the performance, and a thirty-minute intermission provides an opportunity for folks to get on the dance floor and shake a leg to the excellent rhythms of DJ Jonni Ji.
Perhaps the one real flaw in A Burning Opera is that it runs just a little too long. In the second half in particular, there are a few scenes that drag and the flashback about the festival’s crisis in 1996 could certainly have been made considerably shorter without any real loss to the overall narrative. Nevertheless, A Burning Opera: How to Survive the Apocalypse remains entertaining, absorbing and filled with surprises. Much like the festival itself, it pushes past the bounds of the conventional to bring us something exceptionally creative and lots and lots of fun.
A Burning Opera: How to Survive the Apocalypse plays October 12-14 and October 19 & 20 at Teatro Zinzanni, Pier 29, The Embarcadero, San Francisco. For more information visit the Teatro Zinzanni website
