Jacobs School of Music Opera and Ballet Theater opened its season Friday night with “The Cook-Off" by Shawn E. Okpebholo and Mark Campbell. The opera follows contestants of a cooking show titled “America Loves Food” as they compete to win $100,000 with their macaroni and cheese recipes.
The 55-minute food-centered performance drew a packed house to the Musical Arts Center. Attendees had the option to show up early to mingle and enjoy the mac and cheese offered by Upland Brewing Company from concessions.
The performance was comedic from the beginning, with early moments of a charismatic show host to a drunken guest judge drawing laughter from the crowd. Kentucky composer Shawn Okpebholo said he is a foodie which was one of the inspirations for the story. Another reason he said he did a food inspired story was to create something more lighthearted and fun.
“I worked with the librettist Mark Campbell, and I pretty much wanted to do a lighthearted show,” Okpebholo said. “I had just written pieces that are pretty tough, like about slavery and police brutality, so I wanted to do something lighthearted.”
Although the opera was more playful, the creators were still able to tie more serious subjects into the storyline. One of the main stories told throughout the show was of James Hemings — a chef enslaved by Thomas Jefferson who popularized mac and cheese in America.
The show also gave a glimpse into the background of the three contestants who all represented a different minority group. Throughout the performance, the audience learns of the hardships each have overcome and why they are motivated to win the competition. One contestant was a woman who came from poverty, another was a Hispanic man that moved away from his home country and the final was a black woman who wasn’t felt her history wasn’t being shared.
“It was a great storyline, simple but fun,” Chris Carroll, master's student in philanthropy at Indiana University Indianapolis, said. “The backstory on all of the contestants was actually really interesting.”
Carroll said that he thought the cast and the musicians were great with the delivery of their songs and facial expressions helping show their characters' personalities and struggles.
Another aspect of the performance that added to its playful nature was the feeling the audience attending the opera was in the actual studio audience of a cooking show. The set included applause and laughing cues, and the cast frequently addressed the audience by giving them specific looks or gesturing to them.
Frank Graves, another attendee of the performance, said that he wished the melodies of the songs would have been catchier as he felt they weren't memorable and didn’t latch on, but he liked feeling like he was in the studio audience and enjoyed the performance.
“The singing was beautiful, it was really well done and the instrumentation behind the singers I thought was very nicely done and balanced with the voices,” Graves said.
Graves works with Jacobs and is a part of the school’s dean advisory council — a group that helps review school strategies and make improvements. He said that members of the council try to attend as many events as they can, so whenever he is visiting from Boston, he typically tries to see something.
“I hope everyone at IU knows the Jacobs School is a spectacularly important musical school, and the things that go on here are at a level that is extremely rare in a university,” Graves said.
“The Cook-Off" will continue at 5 p.m. Saturday at the Musical Arts Center. The opera will later be performed Oct. 9 and 10 at Wheaton College in Illinois.
