Boyfriend Goes to the Garden, but Not at Jazz Fest

Boyfriend

Boyfriend only takes big swings. The singer, songwriter, producer, and provocateur only enters the public eye if she’s got something worth doing, and reimagining the story of The Garden of Eden falls into that category. 

On May 9, she’ll release In the Garden, a cycle of songs that tell the story of Adam and Eve from feminist, queer-friendly perspective. To help tell the story, she received musical help from The Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears as Adam, Peaches as the Serpent,  Big Freedia as God, and Billy Porter as the Narrator. The production team includes The Lonely Island-adjacent Asa Taccone, Little Shalimar, film composer Joseph Shirley, and Gold Glove.

Boyfriend will play Jazz Fest on Sunday, April 27 at 2:40 p.m., but that’s not the way to truly experience In the Garden, she says in this interview. It will get a proper theatrical presentation on Saturday, April 26 at 8 p.m. at Esplanade Studio.

Boyfriend explains, in this email interview on In the Garden. 

What started this project? 

Well, I’ve always dwelt in more of a musical theater world than a music world, for my live shows certainly, but even in my interests and consumption. The narrative function of something is always what hooks me, so writing a musical has always been a dream and intention. 

I started conceiving this specific idea in 2015. The first thing I did before writing any music was actually a photo shoot to start playing with the character and embodying the concept.

The largely instrumental passage in “Bite” made me wonder if you envision staging this as a whole at some point. Is a theatrical version of this in the works? 

Yes! April 26 at Esplanade Studios will be the whole thing top to bottom! We’re filming it, so it’ll live as a concert film as well. And making that “Bite” moment instrumental is certainly intentional. The project overall is more about creating an inquisitive space than providing a firm rebuttal.

For this crucial moment of actually choosing to take the bite and receiving the knowledge of good and evil, I knew from the start this would be a mostly instrumental, cinematic landscape for the imagination to have full reign. Most of Eve’s lyrics are questions, and she’s meant to be a personification of consciousness itself. Curiosity–and re-casting it as a virtue rather than a failing–is really the central thesis. 

Is it fair to think of this as a rock or pop opera, and what are the pros and cons of making a rock opera? 

Sure, a pop opera feels fair. I’ve been calling it a “narrative album.” 

I think the pros are that you get to present a complex, interwoven vision. And the cons are that you’re presenting a complex, interwoven vision. 

How do you see a project like this fitting into a music marketplace that de-emphasizes albums and prefers playlists? 

Well to be quite honest, I’ve had to give up any considerations of the “marketplace.” Anyone at my level is pretty much spending money, not making money. If I’m going to be broke either way, I might as well do the project I really want to do. 

To what extent is the casting–and the story, for that matter–designed to outrage spiritually tender sensibilities? Or are those people on your radar at all? 

Church folk are always on my radar as that’s where I come from, but this is certainly not designed to outrage anyone. Outrage won’t allow any room for engagement. Christian nationalism is an incredibly dangerous, harmful movement that I hope to see crumble, but I don’t see anyone from that world interacting with my brand at all. It would already offend them as it exists now before this project. 

The religious folks who I could reach are already in a more forgiving mindset, and while I desperately want people to be more intellectually engaged with the religions they perpetuate, I know I can’t encourage that by outraging them. 

When I was growing up, Jesus Christ Superstar was considered sacrilegious. We couldn’t perform it and had to take pains to remove it from our show choir competition medleys. But the first musical I was ever in was Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. It seems there’s way more leeway for Biblical interpretations when it’s not messing with the actual Jesus story. 

Now all that being said, this is certainly designed to invite re-examination, and well, curiosity. There are so many beautiful, gentle, open, origin myths in the world. This one functions as the cornerstone of patriarchy. Sure there’s other ways to interpret it–notions of duality, a breaking off from one-ness–but the way it functions in religion and even in society is this constant reference point for shame and punishment for women. 

Even if we put all notions of feminism aside (which like, lol), there’s still so much value in looking at this story through the lens of mythmaking. That’s why my interpretation is set entirely in the theatrical realm. All the world’s a stage, including the Garden of Eden. 

Our narrator is like the stage manager in Our Town. He gives literal stage directions while telling the story. He is actually omniscient, not God. God is just one of the characters of the story here. 

I love how Greek mythologies (and SO many others, that’s just the one I’ve studied the most) give so much personality to the gods. They can make mistakes. 

I also love the idea of the garden as a stage in a theater because it immediately evokes the idea of an audience, of being watched, being judged. Over the course of the album, the narration calls for a spotlight on Eve. It’s an interrogation, not just of her character, but an invitation to interrogate the whole story, to think about how it functions in our subconscious.  

How do you see In the Garden fitting into the cultural moment of its release? 

I have no idea. I think I’m lucky to be releasing art, and hope I get to keep doing it. Having worked closely with Pussy Riot, I know how quickly freedoms can erode. 

Finally, will any of the guests be with you at Jazz Fest? 

No guests. The Jazz Fest set won’t be a presentation of In the Garden because as a true musical, it shouldn’t be done in the daylight without lighting cues (lol), and really shouldn’t be presented in a setting where folks are trying to also talk and dance and drink. It’s really not a concert. Anyone who wants to see In the Garden should come to Esplanade on 4/26! It is very likely the only time it’ll be staged as a full production.