For Bo

DFW university premieres play about Botham Jean and Amber Guyger case

For Bo's subject, Botham Jean.

Photo courtesy of Facebook/Botham Shen Jean

UPDATE 4-19-2021: The play is making its premiere virtually this month via Theatre TCU’s Vimeo channel. According to a release, eight performances of For Bo will be presented virtually, April 22-25, 29-30, and May 1-2. Immediately following the April 29 performance, Allison Jean and Allisa Findley, Jean’s mother and sister, will participate in a virtual community panel to facilitate conversations of cross-cultural understanding.

Admission to the virtual performances and community panel is free; a donation to The Botham Jean Foundation is suggested. Advance registration is open now via the For Bo event page. A streaming link will be sent to registrants when it is available.

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A theater professor at TCU has written a play about one of the most controversial crimes in recent Texas history. Titled For Bo: A Play Inspired by the Murder of Botham Jean by Officer Amber Guyger, Ayvaunn Penn's work will be presented as a staged reading at the college on February 12 at 7 pm.

Produced by TCU's theater department and Penn's organization Black and Making It, which promotes black excellence in all art mediums and education, the play will be read entirely by students.

According to a release, For Bo uses a fictional narrative to explore "the issues that lead to Jean's death and how society grapples with the resulting trauma."

Following the play, an interdisciplinary panel of representatives from across the TCU campus and other community leaders will join the all-student cast and playwright/director Penn for a discussion to promote cross-cultural understanding.

"It is very special to have the opportunity to present this timely and socially relevant play at TCU with our talented theater majors," says Penn. "The students are excited, and I am equally excited. College is not only where students choose their careers but where they learn how to navigate the world. It is an honor to be able to demonstrate for students how theater, something we love so much, can be used not just for entertainment but as an agent for positive social change. Priceless."

On September 6, 2018, off-duty Dallas police officer Amber Guyger entered the apartment of 26-year-old accountant Botham Jean and fatally shot him. Guyger claimed that she thought she was in her own apartment and that Jean was an intruder, and was originally arrested for manslaughter. In September of 2019, Guyger went on trial for the shooting and was convicted of murder, receiving a sentence of 10 years in prison.

"I wrote For Bo so the conversations about what led to Botham Jean's death would not die with him," Penn says. "It's one thing to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but Jean was in the right place at the right time: at home. The wrong person entered his apartment and made a horribly wrong decision. How do we keep this from happening again? These conversations must continue and lead to action if we want to see change. Hence, my launch of the #ForBo Initiative. I wrote this play in an effort to do my part to prevent anyone else from suffering the fate of Botham Jean."

According to the release, the #ForBo Initiative "aims to use the performing arts as a catalyst for positive social change by fostering conversations that heal racial divides through empathy, examining issues within the American criminal justice system, and promoting healthy relationships between all, but especially African-American civilians and police officers."

Other #ForBo Initiative participants include the University of South Carolina Aiken and KD Conservatory College of Film and Dramatic Arts.

"Upon completion of For Bo, I approached Dr. Harry Parker, head of TCU theater department, and asked for permission to organize a Black History Month staged reading and discussion," says Penn. "My vision was not merely to have a reading of the play, but bring in panelists from academia and the community to lead a discussion in which they could provide professional insight into the issues surrounding this tragic case. I feel very fortunate that departments across campus accepted my invitation to come together for this important cause. Through productive conversation comes understanding, healing, and solutions."

For Bo will be performed in Betsy and Steve Palko Hall in room 130 at TCU. The event is free and open to the public. Seating is limited, and an advanced seat reservation is required. For more information, visit theatre.tcu.edu and blackandmakingit.com.

theater colleges

A good listen

Dallas Symphony and Fabio Luisi release landmark Wagner 'Ring Cycle' set

Fabio Luisi conducting the Dallas Symphony Orchestra

Photo courtesy of Dallas Symphony Orchestra

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Fabio Luisi wanted his Ring Cycle to be heard and not seen.

Wagner’s four-opera epic Der Ring des Nibelungen, approaching the 150th anniversary of its premiere in 1876, has been reinterpreted and deconstructed by directors finding various meanings in the conflicts among gods, humans, giants and dwarfs.

While most new recordings are on video, Luisi led his Dallas Symphony Orchestra in concert performances that were released on 13 compact discs by Delos on May 22 and are available on streaming services.

“Wagner conceived this as a total immersion in visual and acoustic, but I could focus really only on the music, and this was the point actually — not to be distracted by staging and not to have to cope with maybe strange ideas of staging,” Luisi said. “I think the music tells everything.”

Luisi became DSO music director in 2020 and broached the idea while dining two years later with (the now late) Morton H. Meyerson, a longtime board member.

“Fabio came back from lunch sort of giddy but sort of sheepishly saying: `Do you think that this would ever be possible?” recalled Kim Noltemy, the Dallas CEO at the time. “So, I said, well, let’s give it a try. So, we called around to see if there were people who wanted to support it and did a budget.”

After securing a waiver from the orchestra allowing for the needed rehearsals and performance length, recordings were made during four concerts from May 1-5 and six more from Oct. 5-20. Each opera was performed two or three times.

Americans in cast fill big roles
American singers featured prominently, with Mark Delavan as Wotan, Lise Lindstrom as Brünnhilde and Sara Jakubiak as Sieglinde, part of a cast that included Christopher Ventris (Siegmund), Daniel Johansson (Siegfried), Deniz Uzun (Fricka), Tómas Tómasson (Alberich), Michael Laurenz (Mime) and Stephen Milling (Hagen).

Delavan sang Wotan at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 2013 after Luisi took over from an ailing James Levine in Robert Lepage’s much-maligned production staged on a 45-ton set of 24 rotating planks.

“We’re accessible and they know that we’re hungry and we have a chip on our shoulders,” Delavan said. “What conductors like about American singers is their technique is sound. Even a European conductor would say: Well, I’m going to give up some of the communication skills, only one degree of separation with the language, but I’m going to get a solid technique, and I’m going to get pretty good acting chops.”

Lindstrom has been in Atlanta to sing in its production of “Götterdämmerung,” the concluding night of the tetralogy, leading to what is being billed as the first complete Ring Cycles in the America South in 2029.

“The wonderful thing about it is the intimacy between the orchestra and us, because we’re not separated by a chunk of stage or a chunk a scenery or a chunk of concept,” she said of the Dallas performances. “And for people like me, who have had the opportunity to perform the role before, I have all those iterations to rely on for my portrayal that I can sort of filter myself through.”

A younger Luisi listened to famous renditions
Luisi, 67, first heard a Ring recording in Georg Solti’s famous studio set with the Vienna Philharmonic from 1958-65. He also admires Karl Böhm’s live recording from the 1967 Bayreuth Festival and Marek Janowski’s 1980-83 studio version with the Staatskapelle Dresden.

He first conducted Ring when he was music director of Dresden’s Semperoper from 2007-10. Luisi’s Dallas performances include more legato and softer sound than his rendition a decade earlier at the Met. He tries to keep an arc from the first notes of “Das Rheingold” to the final strains of “Götterdämmerung.”

“I have a deeper understanding about the meaning of this piece,” he said. “I consider the ring to be a big Bruckner symphony. So we have the introduction, then we have the first movement, this is “Walküre,” which happens to be a slow movement, and then we have the scherzo, which is “Siegfried,” of course, and then the long, long, last movement. There is a unity.”

dso luisi ring wagner recording concerts music symphony