At the opening reception for Artomatic Takes Flight, the 2014 iteration of Washington’s non-juried free arts event at The Gallery Walk at Reagan National Airport, Artomatic founder George Koch spoke eloquently about the simple goals of Artomatic: first and foremost, to build community among artists. Photographer DJ Choupin and author/librettist Stephan Alexander Parker, both long-time volunteers, were there.  After George spoke, Stephan caught up with him and told him this:

A Roadkill Opera was workshopped in Crystal City, Virginia, at Artomatic 2012. The workshop concert was so well received (“sprawling room only” as every seat was filled and people were sprawled on the carpet) that Parker and conductor/music director Jeffrey Dokken co-produced a studio recording with Blue House Productions’s Jeff Gruber in Kensington, Maryland, in 2013. In the do-it-yourself spirit of Artomatic, when Parker released the recording in 2013, he also published all the sheet music for the score and parts, so anyone can put on the 59-minute opera. The support, encouragement, and facilities provided by Artomatic were instrumental and go back to the second Art-O-Matic.

Parker exhibited at Art-O-Matic 2000 in Tenleytown, in the District of Columbia, highlighting the one-act plays that featured the character Eddie, Parker’s comedy partner in Wyoming.  “Loose Lips,” a one-act that is set in Nora’s Fish Creek Inn in Wilson, Wyoming, has Eddie spinning a yarn about his involvement in the French commando attack on Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior II.

Talk about a small world: Jay Marx, who was also at Art-O-Matic 2000, read “Loose Lips” at Parker’s exhibit. He emailed Parker:

Sat, Oct 21, 2000 4:08 pm

Dude, I wish you had put a phone number on your installation somewhere and we could've been in touch days ago, because my email access is way sporadic, but suffice to say that I spent 9 summers of my youth in Jackson Hole and I knew Nora, before she ran the Fish Creek Inn, from running the JH Rodeo's concession stand, and now I'm acting, some, here in DC and helping to book the Literary Stage at A-O-M, and I will consider this whole artomatic venture a personal failure if we fail to arrange a staged reading of your plays, either on the lit. stage or upstairs on the Rhinocerous stage, and 
Please Call Me, at your earliest convenience, if such a proposition 
interests you--
Jay Marx @
XXX-XXX-XXXX - home
XXX-XXX-XXXX - mobile
Yes, DC needs a dose of the west real, real bad.  Hoping to speak to you 
soon. . .
--Jay

Jay went on to recruit actors and an audience. Since the formal slots on the Literary Stage were all booked up for the final week, the actors gathered on the roof of the garage, outside the temporary stage where Wooly Mammoth was presenting Rhinocerous. Based on the reading, Parker refined his play. On Groundhog Day 2013, with the first recording session for A Roadkill Opera under his belt, Parker published his first book, If You See Roadkill, Think Opera. As described on the back cover:

“Parker opens with his 25-year quest to identify music he recorded off a classical radio station in Chicago. He closes with the true-ish story of whitewater rafting guides from rival firms on the Snake River teaming up during the Yellowstone fires of 1988 to create an original, improvisational comedy sketch show, in the underground opera sensation Opening Night: A Roadkill Opera. In between are one-act plays with art entrepreneurs, kitchen characters, and boat saboteurs. Stephan Alexander Parker guided whitewater raft trips, drove buses, and worked at the Jackson Hole Cinema during his years in Wyoming. He is working on his show business memoir, I Rode With Ben Johnson.”

Thanks to Artomatic for the community, support, and encouragement. Here’s hoping we get a production at International Artomatic 2015: as announced this week, “Artomatic is collaborating again with our Sister City Sunderland England, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Solas Nua and others in advance of an International Artomatic in the 3rd quarter of 2015 on the campus of Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC).”

The 2014 Grand Teton Music Festival is under way, and A Roadkill Opera is being featured in an in-store display at Gifts of The Earth.

During a recent trip to Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and Yellowstone, If You See Roadkill, Think Opera author Stephan Alexander Parker had a chance to revisit the sites of two of his best-known stories. His first stop was at Nora’s Fish Creek Inn in Wilson, Wyoming, which is the setting for “Loose Lips,” a one-act play in that story collection. Stephan met briefly with Nora Tygum, founder and namesake of the restaurant, and for a bit longer with her daughter and the Inn’s current owner, Kathryn Taylor. He had a chance to tell Kathryn this story:

In October 2000, Stephan was exhibiting his writing for the first time at Art-O-Matic 2000 in Washington DC. Stephan had moved to DC only a few months earlier. Among the items in his exhibit were clipboards holding his one-act plays set in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, including “Loose Lips.”

One of the other participants in Art-O-Matic 2000 introduced himself as Jay Marx. Jay said he had worked for his cousin Nora’s concession stand at the Jackson Hole Rodeo for six summers (before she started the restaurant).  He told Stephan that Washington “needs a good dose of the West, real bad.” Not only did Jay suggest that “Loose Lips” get a table reading, he recruited actors and organized the reading on the roof of the old Hechingers Department Store. Meanwhile, the official Art-O-Matic went on inside the building.

That table reading of “Loose Lips” was the first public performance of any of Parker’s writing since 1992’s Roadkill’s Greatest Hits!!!. It gave him the conviction that he needed to write a third play to round out a full night of one-acts (Parker’s one-act play”Two Cases” had received a closed table reading in the tented venue at Teton Village after a performance of Greater Tuna). That third one-act turned into A Roadkill Opera.

Parker’s second visit was to the Silver Dollar Bar at the Wort hotel, which is the setting for A Roadkill Opera. Those who have read the book or listened to the CD (or heard it played live) will recall that A Roadkill Opera tells the true-ish story of the hour before opening night for the Roadkill On A Stick Frozen Foods Theatre Company in its first-ever production on July 4th weekend in 1988. The story largely focuses on the characters and what they are wrestling with: the running order of the show, which sketches stay in, delusions of adequacy, butterflies, and what happens if the show is (or is not) a success. The central dramatic plot point is when the cast learns that the showroom is being torn down.

Exciting news: Sources at the Wort Hotel said in July 2014 that the showroom will be restored in 2015. Wouldn’t it be great to have A Roadkill Opera performed in the same venue that it takes place in?

Ferdinando Paer, a regular in Empress Marie Therese’s band of music makers in Vienna, premiered his version of Leonora in 1804.  Ludwig van Beethoven, his esteemed contemporary, premiered his first version of Fidelio in 1805.

Having seen both Paer’s Leonora and Beethoven’s Fidelio, I have no doubt that Paer’s version of the opera is better than Beethoven’s. This, despite Beethoven having made three attempts to outdo his competitor.

Paer’s 1804 Leonora was the second version of the story set to music. Beethoven’s Fidelio was three of the six versions. Mayr also had an 1805 version. Parker kept Paer’s music and wrote a new story and libretto to it, which can be thought of as the seventh generation opera. A Roadkill Opera was publicly workshopped in 2012 and the studio recording was released in 2013.

Admittedly, I am biased, as A Roadkill Opera is built on the music from the first act of Paer’s 1804 Leonora.