Act 1 Creator Performer and Mentor

Creator, Artist, Performer and Artist Stephanie Vlahos. Her Inspiration came through life and Professional Experience.

Creator Life Journey – Life is about a series of rhymes for Stephanie Vlahos

As a child, I woke up every morning to the sound of inspiration captured in the incessant tapping on an Underwood typewriter.

My parents were writers and teachers. My mother, Olivia Vlahos, wrote extensively on anthropology. She was also a protégé of anthropologist Joseph Campbell and a fabulous professor in her own right, drawing from her earlier years as a child actor, after all, every great teacher has stage presence.

My father, John, wrote for radio and the silver screen in Hollywood. Later, he wrote for early television in New York City, what some people refer to as The Golden Age of Television. He never liked living in Los Angeles, and when he discovered the lush green summers of Connecticut, he moved the family to a house on a hill surrounded by trees. The Redcoats and Minute Men fought in Westport.

Compo Beach still has a cannon on it. My house was a converted artist’s loft. I often fondly recreate it in one manner or another in my writing, for example, a short story entitled, The Sad Story of Imani Cosmos.

I grew up playing in the woods, envisioning large, stacked stones as bunkbeds. I’d play explorer, wielding a large stick to beat the tall grass, always followed by my trusty companion, a golden mutt by the name of Snoopers, my neighbor’s dog. And, of course, changed her name to Zazo (long a).

She was too beautiful, too exotic to be characterized by a generic dog name. Ever since my beloved Zazo, I have never been without a dog. And yes, I had a dreamy childhood. I was fortunate to have a dad who encouraged the instinct of make-believe as a conduit to deep creativity, problem-solving, and invention.

A childhood filled with the freedom to imagine is nothing short of magnificent wealth. And because of that blessing, I spend a good portion of my creative life invested in telling stories that remind people that childhood is sacred and to be honored.

My father, a Creator worked in a detached office on the very top of our hill. It was loft-like and filled with thousands of books and piles of newspaper clippings. He received the first Emmy Award, but he also wrote special (very special) services for our church (the Unitarian Church in Westport), in which the family performed every year.

Despite all of his accomplishments, my father quietly considered himself to be a poet. He wrote sonnets. He also went through a deep depression when I was quite young.

Sensing what it might have been about, I never said anything. I have never sought to tell people how they feel, and my father was such a kind, mild-mannered human that he wouldn’t dare share his feelings.

He never lashed out, never yelled. Never manifested the prison of his depression. He would have a few glasses of wine after making a wonderful dinner.

The dinner ritual complete, he’d retreat to the couch in the living room for a snooze. Still, he’d always wake up in time to put us to bed. With family members drifting toward slumberland, he’d retreat to his office and write till the wee hours.

But his late-night stints never kept him from waking up before all of us, so that we’d be met with the sound of classical music, a warming house, the smell of breakfast replete with hand-brewed coffee, fresh squeezed orange juice, and melon. Such stuff was magic, and I am aware that I was once rich.

So I walked a different creative path from my parents. From a tiny age, I sang loudly and everywhere. Paul Newman once commented on it. I dimly recall my father saying Paul liked it, but I didn’t really care. I was in my head and besides, I didn’t know who Paul Newman was.

I’d later run into Paul Newman at my church in a doorway (for me, many resonant moments have occurred in doorways, my entire life). Years down the line, I nearly knocked Paul Newman over were it not for those blue eyes.

They absolutely stopped me in my hurried adolescent agenda. But, of course, that memory is a fond digression. It had nothing to do with my forward movement into a life of singing.

Performer and Creator

In my early teens, I was asked to sing in two madrigalensembles, one professional, the other semi-professional. I loved to harmonize and blend, even with old people, but everything dynamically changed when I first set foot onstage in a school play.

The equation of my passions had an obvious answer, at least, for me. I loved theatre and I loved singing, and opera satisfied both.

So I became a professional opera singer when a tiny voice in my chest said yes after a conductor friend suggested I might move to Los Angeles and audition for a new international opera company, a company spear-headed by Placido Domingo and Peter Hemmings.

Peter Hemmings also started and grew Scottish Opera to what it is today. After my onstage audition at the Dorothy Chandler, he walked very quickly down the aisle from his seat in the house to shake my hand.

So I had chucked everything – my relationship with a guy, my proximity to my family, my friends and teachers. I put my bull terrier into my car and moved West, all on the whim of the word yes, and it paid off. And all those singer friends in NYC who had laughed at the idea of opera in Los Angeles started calling me, asking if I might assist them in jumping on the LA Opera bandwagon.

LA Opera quickly rose in its international status and in no time, I was standing on a massive stage in a 2500-seat house, singing lead roles opposite some of the greats like Maria Ewing, Thomas Allen, Leonie Rysanek (oddly, Dudley Moore).

I worked with directors such as Peter Hall, Jonathan Miller, and Gordon Davidson. Singing under the batons of conductors such as Neville Marriner, Andre Previn, John Adams, and Pierre Boulez. I appeared in films directed by Walter Hill and Nicholas Triandafyllidis, working alongside actors like Jeff Bridges and Keith Carradine, and the crazy thing about that was, I shared a connection with those two actors – our dads.

John Carradine and Lloyd Bridges had worked with my father or starred in one of his plays for television (which I won’t call teleplays since my father hated that designation).

At one point, in all that glorious upswing, I stumbled. The opera business is both glorious and abusive. It takes great resolve to stand proud in it. Somewhere in the mix, I had forgotten my relationship to the joy of singing. I had forgotten what I had to say. So I jumped off the merry-go-round to explore solo performance under my own steam and unhindered by grand opera’s bluster and demands.

Artist and Creator

I platformed my work as performance art where I could study and explore the art of cabaret, vaudeville, and music hall, creating solo shows where I received the dubious distinction from Associated Press as The Moonlighting Diva. Well…the press.

But I was fascinated by 20th century traditions in theatre and movie music. I loved a chunky ballad. In the late eighties I sang at Jean-Pierre Boccara’s critically acclaimed club Cafe Largo in Los Angeles in double-bills with people like Sandra Bernhard or the fabulous John Fleck.

I loved lyrics. I loved learning the poems of Goethe, Verlaine, Blake, Dickinson, or Baudelaire through composers’ voices such as Chausson or Weill, or the surrealism of Apollinaire in Poulenc’s L’Hotel. “…I light my cigarette on the sun’s flame… … I want to to smoke.” I’d intermix classical form with popular form. Early days stuff that is possibly commonplace now.

The theatre of opera centers on a single moment, resulting in unavoidable and tragic decisions, i..e…, Cio Cio San (Madame Butterfly) keeping vigil on a cliff overlooking the sea, waiting for Pinkerton while not realizing that he, along with his American wife, would take her son.

Her story was not dissimilar to the plights of Brechtian females in Threepenny Opera, “Und ein Schiff mit Acht segeln…” or Weill’s French songs such as, J’attends un navire– “I wait for a ship…” And, of course, the ship would never come.

All women invested in the fairy tale notion that a love would save the day. Butterfly was a Geisha, Jenny, a prostitute. Arguably, geishas were not prostitutes, but companions, and yet Butterfly was used by Pinkerton to satisfy his needs while on tour of duty. Their marriage would later have no value.

Both Jenny and Butterfly made necessary choices out of societal pressure or background. These were free choices, for sure, but were they freeing? One woman was victimized by racism, the other by abuse. Their tragic parallel was in their innocent hope and belief in love. How tragic to yearn for the beauty of love only for that to be tarnished by the object of your love?

I have always been moved by the human condition. When I took on the voices of characters such as Jenny in Threepenny Opera or Suzuki in Madame Butterfly, I walked in their shoes, my outer mind speaking for inner truths while sharing in our great commonality.

As I got older, moving deeper into my inner creative voice, these precious explorations into people and their stories soon matured through a different medium of expression. I became an Equity stage director. And for as much as silence can be as musical as sound, my productions always had a soundtrack. But before that, and significantly, I became a mentor.

Mentoring was a joy wrapped up in the discovery that I loved to teach. I created an opera project for young artists at the celebrated County Arts High School (LACHSA) in LA.

Experience

It grew from what the students fondly called “the chess club” to a wildly popular kids’ project. I believed that the best way to truly appreciate opera was to experience grand opera first hand, per my original experience.

Trusting the value of the music and a teenager’s heightened sense of interfacing with the world, discovering a passion to speak out, use their voices. The teens can be an amazing time. And for as much as some people fail to recognize the high-key drama in opera stories, these students got it. At that time, colleagues in the business counselled against teens in opera, calling it inadvisable, that is, of course, until it became wildly popular. These were early days.

With every success, from a considerable annual grant to recognition by the LA Board of Supervisors or in the LA Times, the kids and I celebrated. We silenced the naysayers, the uptight bastions who would very soon begin to reach for absurd ways in which to make opera relatable. I will always say, start with the great stories. And, big wow, the kids sang grand opera (well, some grand opera) accompanied by a large orchestra, an artful mise en scene, and microphones, of course.

Inspiration

In many ways, the inspiration of my work with them led me to become a professional stage director. All those eager, passionate, and laugh-a-minute teens, reconstructing and deconstructing grand opera stories to find their relatability and relevance, inspired me to move forward and reinvent, again. Meanwhile, some of the kids are now singing at the Metropolitan Opera and Covent Garden, such as Angel Blue, or they inhabit the pop arena like the women in the band HAIM.

Unexpected success stories are beautiful, but I dearly miss the laughs.

Sometimes, our personal lives shift, and with the shifts, the balance in our careers. We make new choices in tectonic emotional jolts.

Moving away from singing and directing operas or envisioning orchestral works for stage because I divorced, met a Scot, moved, changed up what had become comfortable and familiar, and have attempted to navigate the story of an American in Scotland.

Creator

When I moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, a small stranger among tall Scots, my head was filled with stories, and the world soon became beleaguered by Lockdown and the stage went dark. Still, music lives in everything. I explored expression through writing. I had always loved to express myself in words, but never considered it as a substantial expression in the thrall of singing. And so I walked, or perhaps toddled, in my parents footsteps. Both parents gone, I would have to go that journey without their guidance.

Editing my own work I discovered that process to be hugely valuable while also a torturous process of self-examination. I upheld and applied one concept from my years in singing as a common truth in that process. Writing isn’t a listening journey. It’s a feeling journey. It is meaning and communication. In short, are you telling a visceral story, are you colouring a sound in such a way as to cause people to close their eyes and experience something? I’m not sure I’ve succeeded.

I can simply say, it’s a journey and I’m still learning. So here I am in Scotland with my muse Zeus who sits at my feet while I haggle over sentences. And just to round the rhyme scheme, my favorite book as a child was Scottish Chiefs. My favorite movie, I Know Where I’m Going.

Favorite authors and influences are broad from Saki (H.H. Munro), to Thomas Mann, to Bram Stoker, to Don Delillo, to Rod Serling, to C.S. Lewis, to Moliere, to Lewis Carol, to Andrew Lang, to Thomas Wolfe, to Margaret Atwood. And lastly, to my beloved dad, John Vlahos. His first language may have been Greek, but who became a great writer of American stories for early television. Stories told with an empathy for all sorts of people in all walks of life.

Fast forward past the Twilight Zone, Tweedledum, and dry British horror stories – welcome to my stories.

My first novel, Mercury’s Wake – The Long Weekendbegan as an episodic and can be purchased in four shorter books. These designate the days of the long weekend, or as the large novel. The book has a soundtrack I composed and sing on. In some ways it is a small flex of performance art. Stay-tuned for more on that.

And because I have always had a fondness for silly books. These somehow pack a wallop, like Archie and Mehitabel. I have just published my little expressive absurdity. It is about an ambivalent astronaut en route to Mars, called, JOHN K – Am I Alone?

The book is also featured as a pop culture bible in the novel Mercury’s Wake – The Long Weekend. The stories I tell can be seen as metaphor or metaphysical. They are stories about people coping under extraordinary circumstances some might characterize as sci-fi or paranormal. I might call my stories fairy tales, and if the element of sci-fi exists, it is more a reflection of possibility and personal challenge than spaceships and ray guns.  

I’m currently working on a tangential sequel expressed in a series of short stories and novellas entitled 6 – Histories and Premonitions.

“Stephanie Vlahos explores how modern living has changed our sense of community and increased feelings of isolation …
A thought-provoking, timely piece.”

– Lothian Life