GAY-RIGHTS activist Harvey Milk's message was simple: "Be who you are!"
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He said: “Every gay person must come out. As difficult as it is, you must tell your immediate family. You must tell your relatives. You must tell your friends, if indeed they are your friends. You must tell the people you work with. You must tell the people where you shop.”
Milk’s rhetoric was as challenging as JFK’s. Both of them wanted to change the world.
Milk ran for public office four times, three times unsuccessfully. On the fourth time, in 1978, he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the first openly gay person elected to office in California.
Closeted for most of his life, he came late to activism but having found his voice he spoke out loud and proud, making up for lost time. The gay community of San Francisco rallied behind him and the conservative right pilloried him. He galvanised the push for recognition of gays with a central message that was astonishingly forthright and simple: “Come out of the closet.”
And they did. In droves. And the community was stunned, angry, resolute and, in pockets, accepting. Walls began to crack. And he’d only been in office a year.
He put everything on the line. He knew he was a target. “If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.”
A bullet did. Two, in fact. And another three in his body. Before his first year in office was up, another city supervisor, Dan White – Milk’s opponent on gay rights – shot him dead. He also killed the mayor, George Moscone.
Though eligible for the death penalty, White served just over five years in jail on the strength of what became known as the “Twinkie defence” – he wasn’t in his right mind when he committed the murders but under the influence of junk food. Some police openly wore “Free Dan White” T-shirts.
Milk was just 48.
His story was told by Harvey Fierstein in the documentary The Times of Harvey Milk (1984) and more recently in Gus van Sant’s Milk (2008) which won two of its eight Oscar nominations, for Sean Penn and writer Dustin Lance Black.
Director Cameron Lukey is bringing the opera version of Harvey Milk’s life, death and legacy to the Sydney Town Hall on November 15, after a successful Melbourne run.
Ian Horner: What makes Harvey Milk relevant to us here in Australia?
Cameron Lukey: He’s probably the most influential and celebrated gay activist of all time. I'm struggling to think of anybody whose work has been acknowledged the same way. With everything that's going on here, with the upcoming plebiscite and the ongoing never-ending debate about marriage equality, his story is especially pertinent.
He stood up for equal rights and for coming out and being vocal about it. If everyone came out, our friends and relatives and colleagues would be forced to think about things differently. There would be people who are against equal rights, against gay marriage, who’d suddenly have someone in their lives they’d have to think about.
Do we see a personal side of this legendary man in the production?
Absolutely. Michael Korie [librettist] did a lot of research, spoke to many of the people involved, like Scott Smith [Harvey’s partner] and Anne Kronenberg [Harvey’s campaign manager]. They uncovered a side to Harvey that hadn't been seen before. There are things in the opera not in the film or the doco. Really private moments that showed his fears.
What was he afraid of?
Disappointing his mother. There's an extraordinary moment in which he sings about the life he lives now and he wishes he'd been able to show his mother who he is and who he's become.
He was anxious about his image and how it affected his political campaign. There's a beautiful duet between Harvey and Scott, where Scott encourages Harvey to cut off his ponytail because it's holding him back. "Hippies don't win elections" is the line.
But for Harvey it was such a strong part of his identity. He'd done the corporate lifestyle in New York and his hippie stage was his breakaway. To go back to the image he had before he came out was scary for him.
And he knew on some level he was in danger. He knew there were people who wanted him dead. Forging ahead despite that was what made him so extraordinary.
Times have changed. And times haven't changed. Would Harvey run the risk of being assassinated today?
It’s really hard to say because we don't have a Harvey Milk. And it's frustrating that we don't. I mean, if we needed one in the Seventies we certainly need one now!
Why don't we have a Harvey Milk today?
Maybe complacency, now we've achieved a level of equality. And there's an assumption that marriage equality in Australia is coming. There’s a kind of complacency because it seems inevitable.
Harvey reminds us of the people who got us to this point. That's why I'm passionate about this story, why I was passionate about Rock Hudson's story [he directed Playing Rock Hudson in Sydney earlier this year].
We forget so quickly what the world was like for gay men and women 30, 40 years ago. Not 200 years ago. These stories are so recent. And that's sad. I mean, a lot of people don't know who Harvey Milk is. They say isn’t that the guy Sean Penn played?
How did people not familiar with opera relate to it in Melbourne?
You have to get past the word "opera". And it's hard to. Our two leads [Tod Strike as Harvey Milk, Edward Grey as his partner Scott Smith] are from musical theatre and I cast them because that's what we needed – it's not traditional opera and there's something there for audiences who are not into opera.
You'll get a surprise. It has that American music theatre, jazz, blues influence.
The young people who came to see it found it wasn't what they thought opera to be. Very much like Dead Man Walking. I sang in the chorus of that in Sydney in 2007. I absolutely loved it! It was amazing to be part of a show that spoke to now. It made me go looking for another topical contemporary opera.
And I Googled and Harvey Milk was the first that came up. As a gay man, I thought oh my God, there's an opera with an openly gay man as a protagonist. Opera is often considered a museum art form and Harvey Milk was a revelation to me. It was profound!
What are the show's magic moments for you?
There's a duet between Harvey and Scott that gets me each time. I cry every time. It's so loaded. There's so much going on in the dynamic between them, so much unsaid, so much subtext.
You feel their love for one another, you feel Scott's belief in Harvey but you also feel the inevitable end of the relationship. Beautiful, touching, heartbreaking.
Then there's the finale, inspired by the kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead. It's overwhelming to listen to that prayer sung by a chorus of 50 and imagining the candlelight vigil that inspired it. And knowing that it really happened. An overwhelming moment. ❏
■ Harvey Milk: The Opera in Concert is at the Sydney Town Hall on November 15, 5pm to 7.30pm.
■ Details here.
■ Tickets ($32, $38) here:
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