(Bloomberg) -- Watch Night may be billed as an opera, but to librettist Marc Bamuthi Joseph, that’s the tip of the iceberg. “I describe it as an opera and a poetry reading having a bar fight in a church about American race,” Joseph says. Watch Night started duking it out on Nov. 3, when previews began at the Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC) in lower Manhattan. The show opens on Wednesday, Nov. 8, and runs through Nov. 18. 

Directed by Bill T. Jones, a two-time Tony award winner and “co-conceiver” of the piece,Watch Night follows two religious communities in the American South, a synagogue and a Black church, after both places of worship are viciously attacked in hate crimes. The story was inspired by mass shootings at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015 and at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018.

Jones was first asked to direct an opera about the Mother Emanuel shooting by the Spoleto Festival USA, located in Charleston. Although Jones felt the material was lacking and declined the commission, the idea stuck with him. Then, in 2017, Bill Rauch, the newly appointed artistic director at the PAC, called to commission a work for its inaugural season. Jones saw an opportunity to revamp the Charleston idea. He tapped Joseph—with whom Jones had worked at the Philadelphia Opera—to write a libretto. 

As part of their research, the team planned to interview survivors in Charleston. Shortly before their planned trip, an armed assailant walked into Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue and went on a shooting spree, leaving 11 dead and six wounded. “That’s when Marc said to me, ‘Oh, by the way, I have positioned a synagogue across the alley from the Southern church,’” says Jones. “I thought: Really? Well, that's poetic license.”

Set in an unspecified Carolina “not too long ago, and not too far from now,” Watch Night opens in the wake of a church massacre. Featuring an ensemble of 18 actors, it centers primarily on Josh, a journalist (played on Friday by understudy Damon McToy), and Shayla, a corrections officer and congregant at the church (Danyel Fulton). From the outset, Josh’s motivation for covering the shooting is suspect. “American rage is my beat,” he announces, “and business is booming.” His quest for a bankable headline leads him to interview—and eventually profile—the shooter, who’s being held in the prison where Shayla works in a twist of fate that invites shady power dynamics. Halfway through the show, a copycat killer strikes the neighboring synagogue, upending everything again. 

As promised, Watch Night proves to be a boxing match of song and poetry, with expressionist dance and beatboxing jumping into the ring on occasion. A sung duet is followed by a spoken-word poem, in turn preceding an expressionistic dance sequence. Jones’ staging and choreography fills in Adam Rigg’s spare, scarlet-saturated set: A dancer’s contorted body can signify anything from a snarky Facebook post to a flying bullet. The traverse staging splits the audience.

In his program notes, Joseph says Watch Night doesn’t code switch, but “code surfs” among stylistic vernaculars. This is especially true for the score written by the artist Tamar-kali. Composed for strings and wind instruments, the music hopscotches genres: Contemporary classical, African American spirituals and modern pop are the most noticeable influences. All performers are miked, and the vocal approach is generally more redolent of musical theater than opera. An experimental chamber opera at heart,Watch Night isn’t trying to be La Boheme. Tamar-kali refrains from cookie-cutter arias or hummable melodies. Except in response to some rousing group numbers, the audience saves its applause for the curtain.

Of all the sparring forms—poetry, music, dance—none emerges a clear winner. The losers, however, are obvious. There have been at least 565 mass shootings in the US this year; the deadliest—in which 18 people died and 13 were wounded—occurred last month in Maine. When Joseph first put pen to paper, he asked himself, “How do we come back?” This question lingers after Watch Night concludes, like a wound that has yet to heal. 

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