Dr. Atomic by John Adams and Peter Sellars

Abstract

Reviewed by: Dr. Atomicby John Adams and Peter Sellars Andrew Martinez Dr. Atomic. By John Adams and Peter Sellars. Choreographed by Emily Johnson. Santa Fe Opera, New Mexico. 07 14, 2018. The work of Dr. Atomicbegan the moment I exited the Hertz rental-car parking lot at Albuquerque International Sunport. The sunny, one-hour drive to Santa Fe along the Turquoise Trail was interrupted by short, intermittent showers. It was a markedly wet summer in Santa Fe, but the rain did not diminish the magnificence of New Mexico's terrain. The endless stretch of blue horizon, the terra-cotta mesas, and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains—all assembled at 7,000 feet above sea level—appropriately functioned as an immersive backdrop for Santa Fe Opera's (SFO) production of Dr. Atomicand the reparative community work it set out to address for the Indigenous and marginalized populations who live near the Trinity nuclear test site. The 2018 production of Dr. Atomicportended new approaches to achieving justice and parity in its form as a period drama and as a prolepsis of the current moment. The SFO's premiere of Dr. Atomicwas as much a house cleaning as it was a homecoming. Certainly, the significance of the New Mexico–specific opera coming to Santa Fe was expertly anticipated and celebrated by the company's marketing department, but the event also became an opportunity to confront the histories and present-day experiences of pain and suffering that New Mexico citizens have endured since that rainy summer night in July 1945 when the first atomic bomb was detonated. Through meaningful collaborations with local and Indigenous communities, the SFO's production of Dr. Atomicdeparted from its 2005 San Francisco Opera iteration as a period opera and became a more contemporary rendering of nuclear power and its threat to humanity. A 2,400-pound silver orb was the only set piece, suspended in a way that eclipsed the open-air view of the Santa Fe landscape beyond the stage. This particular view had a clear line of sight out to the Los Alamos laboratory where the 1945 bomb was developed and where nuclear weapons continue to be designed today. The cast of the production was joined by people from the Tesuque, San Ildefonso, and Santa Clara pueblos, as well as the folks known as "the downwinders," who live near the bomb's test sites and suffer from extreme cancers and other related health concerns due to exposure to radiation fallout. Dr. Atomicinitiated the first partnership between the SFO and the pueblo communities. A new inter-tribe corn dance was created expressly for the production and functioned alongside the John Adams score and Peter Sellars libretto as a coeval text. The summer dance, usually reserved for the pueblos, featured fourteen adults and children accompanied by five male musicians playing percussion instruments. The ritual demonstration was presented a half hour before the opera began. The dance was then reprised in the second act at the part of the story when it is decided that, due to national security, there would not be an evacuation of the surrounding areas and people. In this scene, dancers and downwinders held vigil and stared out into the audience as irrevocable decisions were made about their fate. Additionally, choreographer Emily John-son, of Yup'ik descent, layered movement danced by four Indigenous artists amid Sellars's staging. Their movement trajectories were like atoms, coming together and splitting apart, around and through the scientists and military personnel. Additional programming for Dr. Atomicincluded pre-show conversations with downwinders and pueblo community members and provided rich testimony about life and the land decades after the atomic bomb was detonated at Trinity. Speakers from the Tularosa Basin Downwinders shared their current decades-long plight to lobby for recognition, reparations, and healthcare resources from the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which was passed in 1990. On another part of the SFO property, activists from the A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition interrupted the traditional "tailgate" picnic in the parking lot to protest Dr. Atomic. This was in response to the Trump administration's 2018 Nuclear Posture Review directive for the Los...