This is the second year Helen Funston has played the role of Viva. "I'm usually the girl in some sort of distress or the cute soprano," Funston said. "This is very different. Viva is a very entire character."
Gene Newell / Courtesy of the Cult of Orpheus
This month, a subversive group of classical musicians called the Cult of Orpheus are staging a holiday performance unlike any other. Viva's Holiday is a short opera based on the memoirs of Portland exotic dancer Viva Las Vegas.
Spoiler alert: there is nudity on-stage in the show, but it's revealing in a different way than you might think.
In the scene, Viva Las Vegas (the stage name of Portland dancer, actress and author Liv Osthus) is home for Christmas. And she's getting into her stripping outfit, a tiny black bra, a G-string and 6-inch heels.
Soprano Helen Funston, who plays Viva, explains the nudity in this context is a very natural, unguarded moment for a woman who spends most of her workday undressed.
"It's just supposed to be really real, really fast," Funston said. "It's not a sensual dressing or undressing."
But, at this moment, Viva's about to expose herself in a way that goes beyond her stage act. She's going to tell her father, a minister, what she does for a living, setting off a weapons-grade family showdown.
Composer Christopher Corbell became enchanted with Viva Las Vegas before he knew he was going to write an opera.
"Viva," he said, "was the first stripper I ever saw in Portland."
Corbell collaborated with Viva on the libretto. He says, one of the hardest part of "Viva's Holiday" was structuring the scene in which a family fight breaks out. "It's just hard to piece together. I'm not willing to do cheap dissonance. I want it to build."
Courtesy of the Cult of Orpheus
Corbell, a native Of Louisiana, studied classical composition, but his non-linear path included busking in New Orleans, bartending in Astoria and software development in Portland.
Corbell says when he read her book, what really got to him was the idea that Viva’s creative community was every bit as vibrant and close-knit as the music community that sustained him.
her entry into Portland’s vaunted adult entertainment industry was as much about community as about dancing.
"When I graduated from college I struck out for Portland, Oregon," she said. "And there was a community of women the like of which I've never met before or since: very creative, super-smart women who thought for themselves and obviously thought outside the box."
Corbell says the book helped the story as an artist's journey.
Viva, according to Corbell, "was someone who had so many gifts, so many talents, but also kind of needed to be an outsider in order to understand what culture really meant to her."
As a music school dropout, Corbell says he idolized "outsiders."
"I definitely felt like a kindred spirit," he said of Viva.
Corbell chose to set "Viva's Holiday" in one representative story from the book: a catalytic year when Viva went home to the Midwest for Christmas.
At the heart of "Viva's Holiday" is Viva's growing self-possession, as she prepares to tell her parents how she's been paying the bills. Baritone Bobby Jackson, left, as Dad, soprano Helen Funston, center, as Viva, and mezzo-soprano Sadie Gregg, right, as Mom.
Gene Newell / Courtesy of the Cult of Orpheus
In another scene, Viva has a conversation with her brother, a soldier, played by tenor Aaron Lange And he just can't understand her line of work.
“I love my work,” sings Viva.
"How can it be," he replies. "It's so demeaning?"
But Viva explains to him she doesn't feel debased by her job. Quite the contrary.
"My most demeaning job involved being fully clothed. And vacant in mind and soul. My stage name there was: Data entry specialist," she sings.
Viva ends the argument with an aria that would involve a lot of bleeps if played on the radio.
"Viva's Holiday" is lined and layered with ideas about how exotic dancers — and maybe all kinds of performers — become a mirror for audience desires. There's power on the stage, but also a flattening effect, masking everything that goes into a performance.
"Viva's Holiday" is onstage at the Star Theater through Dec. 17.
Chris Corbell, meanwhile, is working on a new opera that’s a post-election retelling of Antigone.