Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower

The American composers and musicians Toshi Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon’s Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower is a post-apocalyptic piece that draws on two hundred years of Black music. The work is based on Octavia Butler’s science fiction novels in which a young woman leaves a gated community in the suburbs of a future Los Angeles, racked by escalating violence caused by rampant corporate takeover of public resources, poverty and climate change. As she travels through a parched American landscape, she seeds the beginning of a new faith. Blending elements of science fiction and African American spiritualism, Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower transcends genres in this contemporary music theatre piece about race, gender and the future of humanity.

Toshi Reagon (1964) and Bernice Johnson Reagon (1942) make their Holland Festival debut with Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower. This post-apocalyptic opera is based on two influential sci-fi novels

by the award-winning American author Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006), and blends science fiction with African-American spiritualism to explore themes of gender, race and the future of human civilization. The show offers a highly topical social commentary on the America of today.

The novels (Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents) were written in the nineteen nineties, but have proved to be strikingly prophetic. The story begins in the year 2024, in a time of great turmoil that is all too easy to visualize from where we stand today. Air and water are increasingly polluted. Droughts plague the West Coast; the gap between the haves and have-nots has widened to the breaking point; and violence and unrest spread like wildfire. Young Lauren Olamina, focus of The Parable of the Sower, exists in a self-made gated community outside of Los Angeles, walled in with a small group of neighbors—yet the outside world continues to press closer, with greater danger every day. When the enclave is attacked, Lauren’s only choice is to grab a few belongings and flee, headed north to an unknown future. Thousands throng the roads; they must be constantly on guard. Lauren travels with two fellow survivors from her neighborhood and along the way they pick up a few other travelers who join with them for safety. As they head north Lauren develops a belief system that she names Earthseed, and shares the truths she has come to discover about God as Change, one of the faith’s basic tenets. As the group reaches a safe haven to form the first Earthseed community, they prepare and look forward to the day when humanity will escape to the stars.

Butler's work has had a huge influence on African-American culture, thanks in part to the novels’ powerful, black female protagonist. Toshi Reagon devoured her novels as a teenager, and she and her mother decided just over a decade ago to bring their imagination to bear on Butler's modern classic. The result is a theatrical song cycle, rooted in two hundred years of Black-American music and incorporating soul, funk, punk, the blues, folk and even a dash of electronic dance music. The show features Toshi Reagon (vocals/guitar) leading a five-person ensemble, and a cast of fourteen.

The Reagons have a long history as socially engaged musicians. In the 1960s, Bernice Johnson Reagon was a founding member of the protest group known as the Freedom Singers. She was closely involved with the civil rights movement, and was the founder and Artistic Director of the a capella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock for 30 years, providing musical expression of the concerns of the civil rights movement and African-American history and raising political consciousness among its audiences. For her part, Toshi Reagon’s versatility as a musician, producer, and composer for performance and film showed itself from an early age. She has performed all over the world with her band BIGLovely, and most recently with The Blues Project with Michelle Dorrance. She is a vocal advocate of human rights in an increasingly polarized America, and was the Musical Director of the Inaugural Women’s March in Washington DC in 2016. Parable of the Sower is the mother-daughter duo’s third opera together. The previous two were The Temptation of St. Anthony (2003) and Zinnias: The Life of Clementine Hunter (2013), both directed by Robert Wilson.

The show’s title refers to a parable of the same name in the New Testament (Matthew 13:1-9), in which Jesus, talking to his disciples, uses the sowing of seeds as a metaphor for spreading the gospel — the message will only take root and grow bountifully where the soil is fertile. Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower premiered at The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi in November 2017, and will have its first performance in the Netherlands at the Holland Festival.

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based on the work of Octavia E. Butler creation Toshi Reagon, Bernice Johnson Reagon music Toshi Reagon, Bernice Johnson Reagon song lyrics Toshi Reagon, Bernice Johnson Reagon direction Eric Ting musical direction Toshi Reagon tour management Logan Vaughn choreography Millicent Johnnie set Arnulfo Maldonado costumes Dede M. Ayite light design Christopher Kuhl art installation Abigail Deville cast Tariq Al-Sabir, Afi Bijou, Heather Christian, Curtiss Cook Jr, Tomas Cruz, Carla Duren, Toussaint Jeanlouis, Morley Kamen, Karma Mayet, Josette Newsam-Marchak, Diana Oh, Toshi Reagon, Shayna Small, Jason Charles Walker, Helga Davis orchestra Bobby Burke, Fred Cash Jr, Juliette Jones, Malcolm Parson, Adam Widoff production management Davison Scandrett producer stage management Dee Dee Katchen associate producer Alyssa Simmons consultant Shanta Take audio systems John Kemp production Wise Reagon Arts LLC, Cal Shakes, Meiyin Wang commissioned by The Public Theater co-commissioned by The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi fund New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Theater Project main fund The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation with the support of The Public Theater residence Baryshnikov Arts Center additional support Apollo’s Salon Series Program

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This performance is made possible by

Otemba - Daring Women