An idea for a game that I can do nothing with (potentially sensitive content)

General Off-Topic Discussion
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I’ve got an idea for an opera staging of Carmen. I am no stage director, I don’t know of any who would take this seriously, maybe this will happen one day or maybe it won’t.

I remembered Turandot, and that scene based in Marriage of Figaro, and The Statue Got Me High, and I realised that maybe this concept could work in an IF. But I absolutely am not the person to make it work. But I think it might be an interesting concept that may be very relevant. I guess I’m saying, does anyone want to pick this up and run with it?

This is also a potentially sensitive subject matter. I hope to address it properly, but will welcome corrections.

The idea is that Carmen is trans. What does this change about the story? Very little, because when you think about it, Carmen is the modern liberal woman in a world which has no place for her. Men flock to her; like the original Carmen is objectified, so do many cis men objectify transgender women. Like the original Carmen, they may want to hump her but wouldn’t necessarily want to marry her. This is coarse; an ugly reality that is very much worth holding up a mirror to.

Don José would know from the outset that she is trans. There would be no space at all for any interpretation like “Don Jose turns violent on her because she is trans”. No. Zero space for that. Don Jose murders her for the same reasons as in the original opera - although his conflict may be more relatable (remember the white cis guy in the first season of Pose?), as he is fascinated with a world outside of his own, outside of the one he knows and was supposed to grow old in, and being so obssessed with a trans Carmen is another world-crushing blow.

This does not mean the whole cast is LGBTQ+, but in particular Escamillo might need to be a rather butch gender-fluid, outwardly playing to the macho ideals of the bullfighter but sufficiently fluid that he can, especially in Don Jose’s perception, appear differently than a cis male - or, in the context of the original opera, say, a soldier (not forgetting that he does get into that fight with an officer). The fear in Don Jose that Escamillo may take his Carmen away. Both in the original and in a trans version, it would be because Escamillo inhabits a closer world to Carmen than Don Jose does. In fact, if Escamillo is REALLY butch, it can leave Don Jose further threatened.

The end result is the same. White cis hetero man is unable to cope with rejection and kills what he perceieves to be the symbol of his destruction (his destruction is real, but of his own doing. Regardless of whatever version of Carmen it is, this is not something he will be able to comprehend).

As a tenor, I naturally think about Don Jose a lot more, but Carmen herself would be pretty much the same. The same themes of being herself, being desired, loving love, being free, being marginalised… it’s all there.

I mean… this is just an idea I just had. And now I really want to see this version of Carmen. But the next best thing might be to play an IF version of it, possibly. If I could do it, I would; other opera-based games have shown me it’s possible. But it’s beyond me.

If anyone wants to take a stab at it…?

If anyone wants to discuss the idea further, I’m happy to refine it, as well as - and this is very important - withdrawing it entirely if it comes to light that it inherently and unavoidably reflects harmful views of, or stereotypes, transgenders.

EDIT - Honestly, this came to me because I’m working on Don Jose’s aria, and I was trying to explore the idea that this aria is where he is verbalising his conflict, his inner world crumbling, where he is admitting stuff out loud to himself. And in looking for conflict between his accepted world and the world he is now obssessing over, I stumbled into the notion of a white cis hetero male completely head over heels with a trans woman and being spectacularly unable to cope.

EDIT - Upon reflection, is the final act of violence perpretrated against Carmen not acceptable in our world of violence against trans people? I was thinking that “it is just as unnaceptable to murder either one”, and in both cases Carmen emerges as the tragic heroine, but are we currently living too close in a world of violence against transgender persons that there is no possible distancing? As usual, when thinking about the artistic side of it, I slipped on the real-world facet. I think the idea has a lot of merit, but I now wonder whether it’s simply not the time for it. I mean, women historically also face, and have faced, violence from men. Part of my point was precisely to put a trans woman in that place, to show that they too suffer from ignobile violence, punished for being themselves, and also at the same time highlighting that a trans woman is very much a woman; that’s why I used such a feminine role as Carmen. But maybe this would be more like fanning a fire? I definitely don’t want to do that.

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If I were doing this one (and I’m not – my “to implement” queue stretches longer than my life expectancy), I’d centre that as a way of shining a spotlight on the problem. And I’d probably set it in the present day, the way that Rent was a retelling of La Boheme. Jealousy plus transphobia plus toxic masculinity plus anxiety about “what does this mean about cishet me?” equals an explosive mixture. But I’d also centre Carmen as the protagonist, not Don Jose, and make a proper tragedy of it. (Carmen’s hamartia is getting with cis men who are bad for her, despite the entreaties of her friends, as a way of dealing with anxiety about being seen as a woman.)

I’m not entirely sure that IF is the right medium, though, and I’m already doing a tragedy, three slots down in my WIP queue. It might make a good novel, or Broadway musical.

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Naturally, she should be the protagonist. I tend to center on Don Jose because, as a tenor, I find it useful to see the whole plot and play and characters through the eyes of the tenor character, and explore within that; otherwise I risk playing a critique of Don Jose instead of doing the character justice. If I were to do a staging of Carmen, or IF, it would fail in that regard; by being too Don Jose centric. It is a possible reading, sure, but even I don’t like it much; allowing the aggressor to take the spotlight and making it all about him is indeed part of something I would not wish to perpetuate.

Carmen’s story is about Carmen. Definitely.

I like that, and it’s the type of detail that couldn’t be added on a simple re-staging of the opera (or it if could, it would start to change it a bit too much for my personal tastes; what I really liked about this concept when it was about staging was that we could make reasonably very small changes to make a vast point, because, as far as I could see, it did not disturb the framework of the opera at all. The drama, the scenes, the story, the essence of the characters, and most of all the music; potentially, all of this could accomodate this change naturally) but, if readapted to another medium, can definitely be explored.

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As a sidenote, this reminded me of a staging idea I’d had for Pagliacci which I can actually see how to implement as IF, with very few locations and mostly narrative-based. I may have a WIP in the making. Hmmmm.