CS

Directing Michael Daugherty’s Jackie O, I found myself returning to one central question: what does it mean to be an American icon? Why do we choose them? What behaviors, achievements or personalities deserve hagiography? The world that shaped Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis—its optimism, celebrity, and contradictions, but also its political violence, its turmoil, and its contested future— feel both distant (on “Egyptian time”) and eerily familiar. So, this production invites us to reflect on the American Dream, the shining city on a hill, and the long shadows cast by it. What sacrifices must be made, and by whom, for it to shine so brightly?

​

What does it mean for the many immigrant students of the Mason Gross Opera Workshop ensemble to perform the lives of American pop culture icons, in a time of contested citizenship? If the rush to exclude as many of our neighbors from “all its bright light,” we may soon find ourselves in total darkness. This production’s silliness, its frivolity, its dread, and its hope are all intended as an antidote to that darkness. For our many students, especially those who come to this country from elsewhere, embodying these figures of American pop culture becomes an act of discovery—of both the nation’s mythology and their own artistic voices.

​

In Jackie O’s mixture of glamour, absurdity, tragedy, and hope, we glimpse a mirror of our times. If this production offers anything, I hope it is a reminder that art—like democracy—depends on imagination, empathy, and the courage to look honestly at ourselves.

I sense that this question - who gets to be an icon, and who is left out of that American dream - might be crucial to what Michael calls our “new frontier.”