BY JESSIE WANG, LEAD WRITER (COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL AWARENESS)
It’s the start of 2021. As a member of our music community, what’s the first thing on your mind?
I’m sure you’d say you’re keen to start seeing or performing live music again, after such an unexpected year that brought all concerts to a sudden halt.
But for Menila Moineaux, 2020 was about more than waiting patiently for the concert venues to open up again. For her, it was also a year filled with reflection. A year to cement a deeper understanding of just how fortunate we are to be the creators of music, of joy, and of change. A year that forced her to reassess how we can combine arts with social justice.
Now, Menila leads her opera and social justice project The Cooperative into the new year, and with a renewed appreciation to be the ones who create opera.
We chat with Menila, the artistic director of The Cooperative, about what she’s been up to since she last featured in CutCommon in 2019, and what The Cooperative is doing in the upcoming year.
Hey Menila! So awesome to have you join us on CutCommon again! What has The Cooperative been up to since we last chatted?
Hey Jessie! Thank you so much for having us again – it’s such a delight to join you and CutCommon.
The past year has been both a tumultuous and a quiet one; I’m sure we’re not alone in feeling that way, in the dichotomy of upheaval and stillness that has somewhat swept the world.
At The Cooperative, the year began with our inaugural production, Menotti’s The Consul, and we were really thrilled with how our company debut unfolded. We had a brilliant cast, orchestra, and team; a wonderful audience, comprised of seasoned operagoers and those brand new to the art form alike; and raised nearly $2,500 for organisations working with refugees and asylum seekers in Australia. It was a very exciting way to begin what turned into a very strange year!
It was a very strange year last year, but I’m so happy to hear that the beginning of it was such a success. How was the organisation’s work impacted by the COVID-19 restrictions?
Like undoubtedly every arts organisation, our work grounded to a very abrupt halt in March. After The Consul, we were very eager to bring another production to the stage as soon as possible. And Edwin, our musical director, and I were in the process of selecting our next show when we realised that we wouldn’t be able to perform anything live for the next month or so – which of course stretched to two months, then three, and before we knew it, the entire year.
This hiatus was naturally demoralising to a degree, as we desperately wanted to create and were unable to do so. Edwin, myself, our cast, crew, and orchestra all lost work outside of The Cooperative. Training opportunities and study we’d planned on undertaking overseas became far less possible, and we found our pace and rhythm greatly changed by COVID-19; the plight of artists everywhere, no doubt.
However, I think this experience, time, and reflection has ultimately left us with a far better season, far better plans, and a far better understanding of what it means for us to create than we had before.
I can’t wait to hear more about it. Speaking of live performances, The Cooperative is passionate about making live performances of opera, and the arts in general, more accessible for all. Do you think the issue of accessibility was affected by the onset of the COVID-19 restrictions?
COVID-19 has certainly transformed accessibility in the arts – in many ways, for the better. Throughout the pandemic, we’ve seen the arts, opera especially, become accessible to new audiences in new ways through streaming, digital productions, online recitals; and all accessible with ease and affordability we’d not seen before.
At The Cooperative, we passionately believe that opera should be accessible for everyone; it is for this reason that entry is open to all on a pay-as-you-feel scale, removing financial barriers. Our productions are typically staged in a non-conventional space, bringing opera out of the theatre and into the world around us. Pre-pandemic, our doors were quite literally open for anyone to wander in and experience a performance – no bookings necessary. COVID-19 does mean that – in addition to social distancing, sanitising, mask-wearing, and other safety measures – we will have to take registrations and bookings to enable contact tracing, but our doors remain metaphorically open to everyone.
The advent of virtual performances in our ‘new normal’ has also allowed us to open our accessibility to a far wider cast than previously possible. We have always aimed to be accessible to all performers, but being able to view video auditions submitted over a month-long callout allowed us to hear more artists than would be possible in a face-to-face, traditional audition setting.
That’s amazing to hear that The Cooperative has incorporated the positives of our “new normal” going forward. What have you learnt from “the year like no other”, as most people described 2020 to be?
2020 has really highlighted how fortunate we are to do what we do, and has made me reassess how I wish to create art, and create change, moving forward.
Being forced to detach ourselves from the usual frenetic pace of life-juggling in the arts industry was immensely challenging, but also enabled us to pause and examine what exactly we wanted to express, and how we wanted to express it. This time away from the stage gave us a renewed appreciation and gratitude for the privilege of being able to spend our lives creating opera – for that is a privilege, and joy.
Seeing that privilege, with the clarity of being briefly unable to experience it, has made me more determined than ever to use art as best I can to benefit the world around us.
Indeed – it’s such a privilege to be creators, and we need to use that privilege to benefit the world around us. How do you think those of us in the music community can better combat social and political injustices following 2020?
Everything that went wrong in 2020 did so because our social and political systems have been broken for a long, long time.
The music community reflects the world around us, and so I hope that, in 2021 and beyond, we can respond to the injustices highlighted through ‘the year like no other’ in our work, both on- and off-stage.
Many organisations and individuals responded to the Black Lives Matter movement in June 2020. Now, they can not only acknowledge, but actively seek to combat the lack of representation and diversity in our industry by amplifying BIPOC voices and offering opportunities to those underrepresented in the music community, by removing barriers at all levels, from the earliest stages of musical experience through to the largest performing arts organisations.
As artists, pandemic cancellations demonstrated how fragile our livelihood and stability is. At an organisational level, we can respond to that by continuing to fight for increased funding and support of the music industry, and, in large organisations, by offering stable income and work to artists.
At the individual level, where it feels as though so many factors are out of our control, we can continue to platform injustice in the world around us through the art we create. We can continue to demand equality where we see it missing and, most importantly, we can continue to listen – to our fellow artists, to our audiences, and to the needs of the world around us.
Your season includes works by Gluck, Holst, Puccini, and Mozart. Through the program, you’ll be exploring themes you’ve recently told me are about “recovery, renewal, and revolution”. How did you decide on what to include in the 2021 season?
When deciding on what to include in the 2021 season, Edwin and I asked ourselves three questions – what we wanted to do, what we could do, and what ideas and causes we wanted to raise awareness of in the world around us.
Consequently, I think the 2021 season reflects a balance of canonical and rare works that we love, performed by artists we’re excited to collaborate with, to platform ideas and causes we’re passionate about.
In selecting each opera, we not only considered what we’d personally like to work on, but also what we could say to our audiences through each piece, and what charities and organisations we could support. As such, profits from our 2021 season will go to a range of causes, including recovery and relief efforts from COVID-19, mental health support, working with victims of violence, wom*n’s empowerment and safety, and justice reform.
It was also vital to us that The Cooperative offered opportunities to as many artists as possible, and so, before making any final decisions on our program, we held virtual general auditions. Our 2021 season therefore aims to provide performance opportunities for a diverse cast of all levels of experience, and reflects the interests and strengths of our artists as much as Edwin’s or mine.
This season has been not only unavoidably shaped, but even crafted by the world around us today, and we hope that it can prompt reflection and change within that world.
I love that! So what are you most looking forward to in 2021?
I am truly so excited about each and every production in our 2021 program. I’m excited about the vast spectrum of human emotion and communication we can traverse across the season, and the equal breadth of ideas we can raise and issues we can explore onstage.
I’m excited about creating productions of works I absolutely love, and about sharing music and stories I’m passionate about telling with a diverse audience. I’m excited about the spaces in which we will work, from an expansive outdoor park overlooking Sydney Harbour to an unassuming office high above the city to the depth and intimacy of a gothic church.
I’m excited about the range of charities and organisations we can support through our productions, and about the incredible work they do.
Above all, I’m most looking forward to the experience of working together again as a team with wonderful artists, sharing some beautiful operas with audiences from all walks of life, and using the art form we adore to benefit the world around us; creating art to inspire change.
Check out The Cooperative on the website, and donate to the fundraiser on Australia Cultural Fund.
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Images supplied. The Consul shots by Simon Ross and Antoine Veling.
