WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED

Where: August Wilson African American Cultural Center, 980 Liberty Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh

When:

• Sat., May 13, 2023  * 8:00 PM
• Tues., May 16, 2023  * 7:00 PM
• Thurs., May 18, 2023  * 10:30AM Community Matinee - details below
• Fri., May 19, 2023  * 7:30 PM
• Sun., May 21, 2023  * 2:00 PM

The May 18th performance of We Shall Not Be Moved is a special 10:30AM matinee performance designed for community groups with low-price tickets available. If you are interested in bringing your group to this performance please contact Wendy Parkulo, Manager of Group Sales and Community Initiatives via email or at 412-281-0912 ext. 213 for more information.

Conductor: Viswa Subbaraman+ 
Stage Director and Choreographer: Bill T. Jones+
Projection Designer: Jorge Cousineau+
Set Designer: Matt Saunders
Sound Designer: Rob Kaplowitz
Costume Designer: Liz Prince
Assistant Choreographer: Raphael Xavier+
Lighting Designer: Robert Wierzel
Lighting Director: Todd Nonn
Hair & Make-up Designer: Izear Winfrey
Stage Manager: Robert Klein
Assistant Conductor: Glenn Lewis
Director of Musical Studies: Mark Trawka
Associate Coach/Pianist: James Lesniak
Assistant Stage Director: Seth Hoff
Fight Director: Attack Theatre/Peter Kope

+    Pittsburgh Opera debut
*     Pittsburgh Opera Resident Artist
**   Pittsburgh Opera Resident Artist alumni

Five performances at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center.

We want you to have the best experience possible at our performances!

Here are some details and resources to help. Also visit our Opera FAQs or our Accessibility page. Please note: audio description will instead be offered at the Thursday community matinee performance of We Shall Not Be Moved, instead of Tuesday.

• Run time: 2 hours, 5 minutes including one intermission
• Understand Every Word: We Shall Not Be Moved is sung in English with English supertitles
• Please be advised: simulated gun shots are used in this production.
• Parking Downtown: get real-time parking availability
• Study Guide
• Making-of Video (Opera Philadelphia)
• Pre-Opera Talks: *There will be no pre-opera talk for this production*
• Braille Programs 
• Large-Print Programs 

CHILD POLICY:

• Children must be ages 6 and up. Suggestions and tips for bringing children to the opera may be found at pittsburghopera.org/FAQ.
• All children must have a ticket. There is a 50% discount for kids and teens ages 6-18.

The May 18th performance of We Shall Not Be Moved is a special 10:30AM matinee performance designed for community groups with low-price tickets available. If you are interested in bringing your group to this performance please contact Wendy Parkulo, Manager of Group Sales and Community Initiatives via email or at 412-281-0912 ext. 213 for more information.

ACT I

On the run after a series of tragic incidents, five North Philly teens ( John Henry, John Blue, John Little, John Mack, and Un/Sung) find refuge in an abandoned, condemned house in West Philadelphia. The home sits at the exact location of the headquarters of the MOVE organization before it was infamously burned to the ground in a 1985 police confrontation that left 11 people dead and no government officials indicted or meaningfully reprimanded. The teens are assuaged and even inspired by the ghosts who inhabit this home (who we refer to as the OGs), and begin to see their squatting in the home as a matter of destiny and resistance rather than urgent fear or precarious circumstance. Into this mix enters Glenda, a north Philly native turned West Philly cop who patrols this quiet stretch of Osage Avenue on her regular beat. Glenda observes that the young people have taken over the home and are “hanging out” there when they are supposed to be in school. She moves determinedly to sweep the kids out of the home, threatening them with arrest and ridiculing their intentions. But in a chaotic accident, she moves too far and mistakenly discharges her firearm, injuring one of the teens. In her temporary shock, Glenda is overrun by the other young people, who turn the tables on the situation by pointing Glenda’s own gun at her and subsequently handcuffing her to a chair in the center of the house.

ACT II

John Henry lays bleeding in a pool of sorrow, confronted at a desperately young age with his own mortality. All parties are now frightened, disoriented, and vulnerable, and the only sense of empowerment in this bleak moment comes from the OGs who infuse the home with a spirituality that is palpably felt by the young people in particular. Glenda challenges the validity of this ‘movement of holy ghosts,’ but cannot deny that whatever the origins, the young people, led by the sole female-identified teen, Un/Sung, are clearly operating from a place of conviction.

Still suspicious and driven by her vulnerable position, Glenda probes this conviction, intimating that the teens are not motivated by principle alone. Finally the teens succumb to the reality of the moment: their brother has been wounded and is in need of help, and the most expedient way to help him is to leave the house. They decide to reveal to Glenda the circumstances that drove them to squat in the house on Osage. They think Glenda has something to hide (firing at an unarmed teen) and so do they, and if they come clean with their story, the combination of transparency and quid pro quo may grant them safe, unreported passage out of the house. However, in revealing the origins of their plight, they also realize that a young man who John Blue has killed is Glenda’s own brother, Manny.

ACT III

The family confers feverishly about the increasingly limited options for their next move, concluding that the best “survival” tactic is to “disappear” Glenda altogether. Un/Sung commits to completing the task, instructing her brothers to leave quickly for a predetermined location to avoid any further witnesses while she does “something awful.”

A confrontation between the young girl and Glenda ensues, concluding with silence, complete darkness in the theater, and the assumption of injury.

When the lights come all the way up, the family has vanished, and the house on Osage Avenue has burned to the ground. Glenda tells an interviewer the story of her waning moments with the family from a plane above the action, but we watch a different story unfolding at eye level. All the players are setting the house on “fire,” not with kerosene or grand flames, but with small, glass-framed candles. The image is not of arson, but of ritual. The Family is turning the home into an altar, perhaps an instrument of forgiving, of letting go, of release, and of renewal. As the lights come down for the final time, the last remaining image on stage is of the skeleton of a house, lit up like a shrine, while the OGs move around it in holy rites.

• Review: Pittsburgh Magazine - Collier’s Weekly: There’s an Essential, Haunting Performance Underway at the August Wilson Center
• Review: onStage Pittsburgh - ‘We Shall Not Be Moved,’ Pittsburgh Opera’s Season Finale, A Decided Winner
• Review: Seen and Heard International - Pittsburgh Opera presents two contemporary works that dare to speak the truth
• Review: Pittsburgh Quarterly - “We Shall Not Be Moved” - Dazzling Tragedy and Prophecy
• Review: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - "...an opera about America's failings..."
• Review: The Incline - "an unflinching portrayal of the push-and-pull forces of violence, race and gender in America’s cities"
• Review: Pittsburgh Owl Scribe - We Shall not be Moved is an extraordinary opera
• Review: Pittsburgh Institute of Nonprofit Journalism - “We Shall Not Be Moved,” a Modern Opera Exploring the Long Reach of the MOVE Bombing 
• OperaWire: Pittsburgh Opera to Present Two Modern Operas This May
• onStage Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh Opera to Wrap Season with ‘We Shall Not Be Moved’
• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Pittsburgh Opera's season finale explores political resonances from the 1985 MOVE bombing
• Entertainment Central Pittsburg: May Theater Guide
• NEXTpittsburgh: 12 May events not to miss
• Pittsburgh Urban Media: Tony Award-Winner & Kennedy Center Honoree Bill T. Jones directs and choreographs Contemporary Opera
• Herald-Standard: Pittsburgh Opera presents 'We Shall Not Be Moved' through May 21 
• WQED-FM 'Voice of the Arts' podcast interviews
  • Stage Director and Choreographer Bill T. Jones
  • Kirstin Chávez (Glenda)
  • John Holiday (John Blue)
  • Conductor Viswa Subbaraman
• WESA-FM: What to do in Pittsburgh this weekend: May 12-14
• Observer-Reporter: 'We Shall Not Be Moved' presented by Pittsburgh Opera through May 21
• WQED-FM: Anna Singer interviews composer Daniel Bernard Roumain live on-air
• Front Row Center podcast: Roumain and Joseph's opera We Shall Not Be Moved 

Un/Sung (Alexa Patrick) tells Glenda (Kirstin Chávez) how the deck is stacked against her.

John Mack (Adam Richardson), John Henry (Ron Dukes), John Little (Chance Jonas-O’Toole), and John Blue (John Holiday) tell us a little bit about themselves.

The family talks about the importance of self-love.

Glenda (Kirstin Chávez) and members of the family tell how sobering and frightening it is to be 'suddenly taken.'

Tensions mount...