“Parable of the Sower” Opera Powerfully Tells a Story of Climate Change, Displacement, Faith, and Survival

Throughout the past year, Reagon has been leading a community-based project—Parable Path Maine—based on the themes of her opera: the effects of environmental ruin and inequality, and the ideas of embracing and creating change as essential to the human condition.

She is the second Joseph McKeen Visiting Fellow Bowdoin has hosted—the first was bestselling author and president emeritus of the American Enterprise Institute Arthur C. Brooks. The McKeen fellowship is meant to introduce a distinguished visitor prominent in public discourse to broaden the College's exploration of the common good.

Since last summer, Reagon has made several visits to Bowdoin and Maine, drawing together activists, students, artists, performers, and others to engage with Parable-related issues through creativity and community. These events were like stepping stones to the performance of her opera to a sold-out theater on April 14. 

Parable Path Maine was collectively supported by Bowdoin, Indigo Arts Alliance, Portland Ovations, and the Maine Humanities Council. “This journey has been a testament to the power of the arts as a tool for social change,” said Marcia Minter, cofounder and executive director of Indigo Arts Alliance.

The opera

Reagon's Parable of the Sower opera is based on the dystopian, speculative novel with the same title by Butler, about a fifteen-year-old African American empath named Lauren Olamina. Butler's book, though written in 1993, takes place in 2024 and prophecies climate disasters, like fires and drought, and social breakdown.

The show opens with Lauren living with her family in a protected enclave outside of Los Angeles. Only a wall stands between them and the growing fierceness of a society ravaged by ecological collapse, rampant corporate takeover of public resources, drugs, violence, and widening economic disparity. Much of the opera is devoted to a fraught few weeks as Lauren pleads with her family and neighbors to prepare for the inevitability that their wall will be breached. 

On stage, this wall is symbolized by a glowing, floating, half-circle of a curtain, which sinks to the ground after Lauren's community is, as she foresaw, attacked by arson-besotted vandals. The battle leaves many of the residents dead, with the rest forced to scatter. Lauren begins to walk north, accompanied by two fellow survivors and a few people they meet along the way.

Their fictional journey mirrors that of many real-world climate refugees. The singer-narrators in the performance briefly pause the storyline to share statistics pertaining to refugees back in 1993, a number that has grown by millions since.

Lauren's journey also reinforces the trajectory of a new religion she is developing, which she calls Earthseed: The Books of the Living. The main tenets are based on the notion that “God is change,” and that believers can influence changes even as they are being changed.

“All that you touch you change. All that you change, changes you. The only lasting truth is change,” Lauren writes in her journal, a line that becomes the ringing chorus of the opera's final song.

In the Parable opera, the tense, disturbing story is told mostly through songs and lyrics written by Reagon and her mother, Bernice Johnson Reagon. Their songs don't linger within any one musical genre, but range widely through gospel, blues, rock, and folk. 

On April 14, the talented eleven-member cast—with voices that filled the huge auditorium—was accompanied by a five-person orchestral band, as well as Toshi Reagon on acoustic guitar and two additional singer-narrators. The set was simple, with wooden benches set in a half-circle—like pews—serving as props for scenes of community discourse and individual musings by characters.

Once Lauren set out on her journey, the stage lighting became more vibrant—dark blues and purples. While the audience had been bathed in a gentle orange light throughout the first half of the opera, the whole theater darkened after the collapse of Lauren's community.

Reagon sat on stage throughout the two-hour performance, flanked by the two singers. She lent her rich voice to many of the songs, and occasionally offered spoken remarks to propel the story. 

Though the message of the work is somber, foretelling a day when environmental devastation has helped to dismember society, Reagon injected some humor into the night. “[Octavia Butler's book] is brilliant,” she said at one point, knocking down theater's fourth wall to directly address the audience. “But it is missing something that is vitally important to the healing of the people—a folk singer!” 

Then, she made the disclaimer that she's not a folk singer, but rather a multi-genre musician. The point, she clarified, is that music, historically folk music, brings people together to protest, to call for change, to demand rights. “If I were in the book, I'd have a new song every day,” she said.

The songs the Reagons have written to tell the Parable of the Sower drama and highlight its themes perfectly match our times and our anxieties. The main chorus of one, for instance, asks: “What you gonna do when the world's on fire?” 

The drama between Lauren and her father, a pastor, illuminates the conflict with those who believe the old ways will carry them through a transforming world. “The Church is standing,” her father sings. “God don't never change,” he adds.

No, Lauren rebuts him, “God is change, and in the end, God prevails.”

In another chorus, Lauren warns her friends, family and neighbors: “There's a new world comin', everything gonna be turning over, where you gonna be standin' when it comes?” It's a question we are all asking ourselves as we consider a rapidly shifting environment.