Fig Trees

It is not possible to write an opera about saints, when the main characters don’t die. Therefore Gertrude Stein, avant-garde writer and lesbian icon, is ill-tempered. This time, her heroes are Zackie Achmat from South Africa, for refusing to take anti-retroviral medicine until it’s available to everybody and Canadian pharmaceutical industry adversary Tim McCaskell. Both are still alive and combatant in their never-ending AIDS activism. John Greyson’s (Lilie, Proteus) documentary style atonal opera serves as both a lesson in recent history as well as pure cine-film experience.