♪ Opening theme music ♪
Hello, and welcome to this episode of ArtsAbly in Conversation.
My name is Diane Kolin.
This series presents artists, academics, and project leaders
who dedicate their time and energy
to a better accessibility for people with disabilities in the arts.
You can find more of these conversations on our website,
artsably.com, which is spelled A-R-T-S-A-B-L-Y dot com
♪ Theme music ♪
Today, ArtSably is in conversation with Robin Han,
a Soprano opera singer from Vancouver who is also a disability advocate.
You can find the resources mentioned by Robin Han during this episode
on ArtsAbly's website in the blog section.
(Translation) I must go - it's necessary! For his sake!
My poor knight! Oh yes, it's him I love.
And yet, I hesitate today.
No, no! I'm no longer worthy of him.
I hear that voice that draws me against my will:
"Manon, you'll be a queen - queen by your beauty!"
I'm nothing but weakness and fragility.
Ah! Despite myself, I feel my tears flowing
at these erased dreams!
Will the future have the charms
of the beautiful days gone by?
Goodbye, our little table
that united us so often.
Goodbye, our little table
which seemed so large for us!
Honestly, it's unimaginable -
so little space when we embraced...
Goodbye, our little table!
We shared the same glass -
both of us, when we drank from it,
would search for each other's lips...
Ah! Poor friend, how he loved me!
Goodbye, our little table.
Goodbye!
Okay, thank you very much, Robin, for being here today.
Thank you so much for having It's an honor to be here.
I am with Robin Han,
who is in Vancouver right now and who is a soprano,
and many, many other things we are going to discover today, including vocal coach
and, of course, opera singer, and a lot of different things.
I will first ask you to present yourself a little bit, who you are,
your background, and also provide a visual description. Thanks.
Absolutely.
Well, hi. My name is Robin Han. My pronouns are she/they.
I'm a white femme person with brown hair and high femme fashion sense.
I'm a disabled opera singer, stage director, vocal coach, and content creator,
living and working on the unseated occupied lands of the Musqueam, Squamish,
and Tsleil-Waututh peoples in what is colonially known as Vancouver.
I have Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a genetic connective tissue disorder.
For that, I use silver ring splints on my hands for
support, and I often walk around with a very sparkly cane.
It's a very nice cane.
Thank you so much.
Then, of course, it just fell all over everything.
I very often say about mobility aids:
you know, they I don't have to be ugly to work.
If I get to be a little bit more, you know, glamorous
and get to match my mobility aid to my outfit, then so much the better.
Do you know about the singer Lachi, who is an American singer?
She's blind and she's a Latina singer.
She is also a fashion nerd, and she has
a cane that is totally glittery with lots of things.
Her cane match her outfit all the time.
So have a look. I love it.
I will.
I have a small collection of walking sticks, and I match them to my outfit.
They all have different names because,
of course, they do, because I'm an opera singer.
I had to make it extra.
This one right here, the one that matches the outfit I'm currently wearing.
Her name is Elsa, I think, for obvious reasons, for those who are watching.
It's an ice blue with an ombre to white sparkles.
Yeah.
Elsa, it couldn't have been anything else is her name.
Very nice.
Where did you grow up and what was your musical education?
Sure. I grew up here.
I grew up in Vancouver, and I became an opera singer entirely by accident.
I have always been a storyteller.
That was always true of me from a very young age.
I first started as a dancer, which is pretty common, actually,
for people with my condition, with hypermobility, because certainly
when you're a child, in particular, you often have very few other symptoms,
aside from being weirdly flexible, so you end up in dance.
I was a ballet dancer very seriously starting from a very young age.
Then from there, I started doing theater and film, I became an actor,
and I, as a child, was in a few TV shows and movies.
Then I started doing musical theater,
summer camp, the way that so many little theater kids like I was would do.
I started taking voice lessons.
I took voice lessons with a wonderful, super supportive opera teacher.
And by the time I was about 16, so about six years after I had started
taking voice lessons, I just looked around and I went, I guess I sing opera now?
When did that happen?
It just sort of happened to me.
It snuck up on me, and the rest is history.
I then went to University of Manitoba for about one year for opera, and then I
started getting a more practical education.
I was on stage a lot.
I really made it my business to just get on stages and develop my craft that way.
I was lucky enough to be able to call it my job.
Very good.
You're with a company or you are just
an independent opera singer who is going from here to here?
I am an independent opera singer.
That said, I am also a co founder of Opera Mariposa,
which is Canada's first disability-led and run opera company.
I co-founded it over 10 years ago now.
I think it's been about 12 years,
which while I practice my art
in lots of different companies, all across Canada and in Europe as well,
I wouldn't be able to make my as accessible to me
as it is without the support that was built through my work with Mariposa.
I'm really, really grateful to have been a part of that.
My life would not be the thing that it is right now without
having built such a community of disabled artists through Mariposa.
When did Mariposa start?
Ten years ago?
I think almost 12 now. I think that was it.
I I think we just noticed the 12th anniversary going by.
Who's the other co founder?
Jacqueline Ko.
She and I co founded it.
Just taking a drive around one day.
Then with the support of Stephanie Ko as well,
we built one of the things that I'm the proudest of that we've ever done.
It's been a It's a blessing to be a part of.
You're doing regular shows with that company?
How does it work?
Right now, no, because
most members of Mariposa are very immunocompromised and are
still sheltering from COVID and are not doing any live productions.
That said, we have been creating online
content since the beginning of the pandemic.
The pandemic is ongoing and we believe that immuno inclusivity is access.
We're making new systems by which people can make immuno-inclusive operatic art.
There are lots We have
videos that go up every year, particularly as part of Mariposa's May fundraiser.
We're working on maybe some larger works behind the scenes, slow and steady.
But yeah, and in the meantime,
I've been lucky enough to be able to make more art elsewhere around as well.
You are also a voice coach, a voice teacher?
Yes. I have a wonderful studio of artists I love.
I teach entirely online. Again, it's an access measure,
not just for myself, but for my students as well.
Most of my students are young adults or adults,
some of whom just want to sing for joy,
some of whom really want to be able to do this opera thing very seriously.
But the thing that I discovered, again, I didn't really choose this,
was that I guess as a person who is so open about my disability in the arts
and in the classical music world, I also then attract a lot of disabled students.
About half my studio
has some form of disability, and we make learning how to sing more accessible, too,
because a lot of the barriers to the operatic world or the classical
music world, or even adjust to music more generally, start at the beginning,
start at access to education and access to learning technique.
I know of a lot of studios where in the past, people have been
sort of
told, maybe not in so many words, but have been told in the past that maybe
if you're not able to get to every lesson because
your health is not allowing you to do that, that then implies that you're
somehow not working hard enough, which is, of course, not true.
That's not how it works at all.
So yeah, I've been...
My focus on disability in the arts
has really permeated into every single artistic thing that I do.
I became really passionate about creating an accessible place for people to learn
healthy technique and to learn to get to know their voices
because the voice is so much a part of our identity for so many people.
Embracing the voice and embracing the expression that that can be - and even
just embracing the amount of noise a human is capable of creating,
gives anyone who does it, but disabled people in particular, I find
a real sense of identity and of belonging in one's own body.
So, yeah, I find it really important and cool.
Again, I'm really honored to be a part of that because
I get to be a part of people's growth and acceptance every day.
So what's the name of the studio
and are you accepting new students? [Laughs.]
It's a very creatively named studio, the Robin Han Vocal Studio.
Oh, how deeply creative name.
I do constantly accept new students,
but I always have a caveat, and that is I'm a freelance artist.
Sometimes the schedule gets a little bit wonky, but
I do have space, technically, when I'm not in rehearsal.
You also told me that you spent some time in Germany.
Yes, I did.
I was pursuing the sort of more traditional operatic career
over in Germany because a lot of Canadian operatic artists
will know that that's often a place that you go to try to build your career
and become a "serious opera artist" because, oh, look at those wonderful balloons that
light up whenever you make a hand gesture and max now.
Anyway, so I went and lived in Berlin for about two years and I was
singing across Germany and throughout Europe.
But that was actually as I was discovering my body's limitations,
I had always imagined that I was "the healthy one" in my circles.
That was an identity marker for me.
But I had already been experiencing some
symptoms of my genetic disability at that time, but I always just dismissed them.
I said, Oh, my body's just a little weird. Right?
But while I was trying to build this career in Germany,
and that career requires a lot of personal hustle and really takes -
takes belief in that sort of hustle culture and takes the...
And not just belief, but the ability to push yourself really, really hard to do,
my body just wasn't able to keep up, really.
That was where I really noticed, Oh, my body is not actually
doing what I am demanding of it.
At the time, I was in my mid to late 20s.
I really should have had my body been healthy.
And I remember, like...
episodes where I was just lying on my kitchen floor because I'm unable to get up
and feeling really ill and not actually noticing that I had then caught
something else because my baseline had been to feel so ill.
I had some real health struggles there, and it really threw into sharp relief.
Oh, this may not be a thing that I can do.
I may not be able to
sustain this career in the way that I have been told is required for an opera singer.
Because a lot of the messaging, at least in the places that I
spent some time in, in the operatic world, sort of tell you -
again, maybe not in so many words, but tell you maybe unconsciously,
that the only valid way to have an operatic career is to do this step,
and then this step, and then this step, and then this step, and then tada.
If you do those accurately or correctly enough, you will pop out a success.
And first of all, that's not how anything works, no.
But just attempting to follow those steps was just something my body couldn't do.
And the messaging that said that if you don't do that or if you don't succeed at that,
it's because you are less than in some capacity.
You may be less than as an artist.
That was wrong and backwards
because I was finding the beginnings of some success in Germany.
And I knew I had something to share with the world and that I was -
that I really wanted to, but my body couldn't take it.
I wasn't able to pack up my entire life
and stick it in a suitcase and take that suitcase over
cobbled streets to go from one audition to the next.
I wasn't able to sleep on long haul busses.
I wasn't able to, you know, keep up in any real way.
And I made the, at the time, very sort of painful decision to let it go.
And you grieve the life, of course, that you've imagined for yourself.
You grieve the loss of that previous dream.
But in the end, most grief
is something that you are able to move with and eventually, hopefully, through.
I was able to discover a version
of an operatic and artistic and performance career that
was more modular and that suits my dynamic disability a little better.
I've become freelance here in Canada, which sure, maybe there is
less of an operatic culture here in Canada than there is in Germany.
But I've been truly privileged to be able to create something out of
my love for storytelling in the performing arts spaces.
In so doing, discovered that
there was never anything wrong with that idea in the first place.
But as a storyteller, you also did something very good
it's to create content. You have a YouTube channel where you post a lot of videos
where you talk about what it is to be a disabled singer,
what it is to be an opera singer, is opera boring, things like that.
It's true.
As part of that the process of discovering my new self as a disabled
artist, as opposed to just the random artist next door that I had
thought I was when I began my career, I ran up against so many spaces where
there was not even just misinformation about how disability might work
in the operatic world, but a lack of information at all.
To be disabled in opera is often to feel
very isolated as though you're the only one.
When, of course, we're not.
The disabled artist have always been here
in the operatic world, and will continue to be here.
The more that we can,
as an operatic sector, embrace that and acknowledge that
and move forward with access in mind I think that's how you not only future-proof
opera, but you can create a space where the operatic artist feels
less isolated and where people coming in to opera
know that there may be space for them in the end.
I felt like it was really important
to start talking about it because I am so lucky as to be able to talk about it.
Because, again, there is such a lack of
an atmosphere within opera that even acknowledges that disabled opera artists
could exist, which, of course, again, of course we exist.
But yeah, I felt like it was really important because
I'm so lucky as to have been able to build an accessible operatic career for me,
whereas so many other artists I know whose work is phenomenal,
whose voices would have been so valuable to the operatic world,
ended up having to leave it due to inaccessibility.
I feel like it's such an immense privilege that I have within the operatic world be
able to build a career that I had to use it, you know.
Because I'm one of the very few
operatic artists out there right now who are able to be out about disability
because so many people are really in the closet about it.
I use that analogy very consciously because you really do.
I'm a queer, disabled opera singer.
Coming out as queer is one coming out process,
and you have to come out again as disabled because there's so much pressure
in the operatic world to "appear healthy"
that people dealing with health issues, people living with dynamic disabilities or
disability writ large often feel like they can't speak about it at all.
So I...
As soon as I realized what I sort of had in my life,
that I had this beautiful space that was accessible, that was
a stable way for me to have an operatic career.
I felt like I had to share it.
It feels like my duty.
Of course, you get to be - YouTube and Instagram, you get to be silly, too.
That's always a bonus.
That's what I was going to say.
It's not only interesting content, it's funny content, it's touching content.
I really recommend everybody to go and have a look at your
YouTube channel because there are some important questions, too.
I love - one of my favorite videos.
I mean, I love them all! But
I love the video where you are talking with Jacqueline Ko
because you're talking about so many many different aspects
of teaching and learning and being an artist with a disability.
One of the things that I noted because I really liked it
is when you were talking about teaching and learning as a teacher and as a student,
and you said, if you have a teacher who is willing to -
who is not willing to give you the space that you need, then you have the wrong teacher.
Find another teacher. It's not your fault, it's not -
But find another teacher,
find someone who will respect that space.
Then Jacqueline Ko said, If you are a singer and have students
with disability, then be prepared to be creative.
And I 100% agree.
It's so important, and it's great to hear that.
It's so true.
One of the things that we think about a lot as a company, too,
through Mariposa, is that we think about how
access means different things for different people,
that there is no one way to be accessible because people's needs are all different.
Those needs are basic and yet are treated like luxuries.
They're not.
Creating space for everyone means creating space for everyone.
It is okay to not have thought of this type of thing before.
We're always learning.
We're always working to make spaces more accessible for more people.
Then there will be the next person who comes in and you go,
Oh, right! Oh, I didn't think about that.
Maybe I can add that into my practice
of making the arts more accessible for my students in this way in the future.
And then, you know, maybe a year later, you'll have someone who needs the opposite thing,
and they might be be a little bit, they might bump up against each other.
They may be even opposing needs, but
creativity is really required not just to be a creative person,
not just to be an artist, but to help new people share an art,
to find new ways to bring people into the art world,
to make it accessible. There's no recipe.
It's not like baking a cake
where you throw in this amount of accessibility in this way,
and this amount of accessibility in that way,
and you suddenly bake it all up and you're done making it accessible.
That's not how accessibility works.
It's an immense privilege to be able to keep working on it,
to keep working on finding a new way to be creative with your students and with your -
or even with your rehearsal time, your rehearsal space.
That's the beauty of inclusion.
Yeah, in academic, we call it crip time. [Laughs.]
Yes. Oh, yeah.
I recently posted a post on Instagram
because I do quite a bit of this work on Instagram, too,
because making a YouTube video takes a lot of time.
When I have a lot of work going on, it just take -
It'll take a while for my next video to come out.
But I was posting a video on Instagram
or a post on Instagram saying, Hey, for all my disabled artist friends,
anonymously or not, let me know what you find is the biggest
barrier to you to entry into the artistic spaces that you want to live in.
I got quite a few responses from lots and lots of people, and lots of ways,
but every single one in one way or another, boiled down to crip time.
Every single one.
And that was not just in the operatic world.
That was in, you know,
classical music, that was in visual arts too,
that was in dance, in one way or another,
every person who responded had a barrier to entry related to time.
Related to time allotted to do things, related to time expected to be in space
with other people or being in rehearsal or even just being perceived.
It always to boiled down to that, and that's one of the things that
I find organizations and/or larger administrations
and larger - people in positions of power within the arts world
might be less likely to think about when it comes to access.
But fundamentally, it's the thing that seems to affect us all.
How do you deal with your own crip time in your activities?
Oh, wow. Well, I mean,
I put everything in my schedule, and if it's not in my schedule, it doesn't exist.
Just doesn't happen.
I have to plan my season very, very carefully.
I have to plan how I teach and when I teach very, very carefully.
For example, if it's happening before
11:00 AM and I have any other show that I'm doing, I can't do it.
I can't do it.
If I attempt to get out of bed for that, my body will not do it.
I will be horizontal.
I don't get a say.
So I do a lot of balancing of,
okay, if my rehearsals for this show are on this day,
how much time do I have between the end of that and me getting home and me
winding down and my being able to function the next day?
And it doesn't always work out because a dynamic disability
is a dynamic disability. It's not math.
You don't input this amount of scheduling and get out this amount of energy.
Sometimes you
stand up in the morning and your body says, or not, and you go back to bed.
But a lot of very careful planning, a lot of breaks, certainly more than
a lot of other companies would have put in.
And really being able, being -
again, in the very lucky position to be able to talk with the people that I'm
making this collaborative art with and say, These are the things that I can't do.
This is where my boundary is.
This is where my capacity level currently is.
Right now, I'm doing a whole bunch of shows at once, which is a lot.
It's frankly too much, but I'm working on it.
But I'm also in a position where I'm stage directing all of them
because that's another thing that I do
because that's my very dynamic career.
When you get to be a stage director
in a show, you get to set your rehearsal schedule.
I set my rehearsal schedule very
thoughtfully in a way that will work for me.
They're spread out.
The rehearsals are not too long.
Rehearsals come with big breaks built in that,
yes, there are equity-required breaks, but ones that I know will make it doable
for me as well as for anyone else who might need the same in the cast and crew.
I do a lot of directing so that I can make my own schedule, really.
Then when I am performing, well,
If I need extra time, extra space,
I set that out right away.
If that company or those people don't want to work with me because of it, well,
frankly, as I've become want to say recently,
that's a "them" problem and not a "me" problem.
It's their loss.
Then if someone were to say: actually, we don't want to work with you we think
that that's too much or whatever, well, that's a good thing for me to know too
because I wouldn't want to work with the company that felt that way.
I've been very lucky that I haven't really had that experience
here in Canada since I've come back for sure.
I think, again, partially due to
Mariposa's existence here in our local artistic community, it's been doing a lot of
good in changing people's perceptions about what is,
"diva behavior" and what is advocating for your basic access.
So, yeah, I've been very lucky,
but it's mostly just a lot of very careful scheduling and then knowing when is my...
How long is it between now and the time that I will collapse?
Because,
yeah, in the summer, when all the shows are done,
I'm I'm horizontal, and that's part of the plan.
Then I emerge again with the next season.
What are your upcoming shows?
Oh, gosh.
Well, I have quite a few.
I'm directing three, which is a lot.
Might be a little too much, but I love them all.
My first show that's coming up is
a production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance
that I'm directing at the North Shore Light Opera Society.
It will be running from May 16th to 26th
at the Presentation House Theatre in North Vancouver.
It's inspired by Our Flag Means Death,
which was a queer phenomenon of a show about pirates.
I'm very, very excited that we get to
do an extra queer version of Pirates of Penzance.
It's been a real joy to create so far.
I'm very excited for people to see it.
So yeah, if any Taika Waititi fans out there really
also like Gilbert and Sullivan, well, have we ever got the show for you?
The next show I'm doing after that is
I'm doing Menotti's Old Maid and the Thief with Heroic Opera,
June 1st and 2nd at the Annex Theater.
That one's really exciting for me because it's my first show I get to use
my mobility aid on stage in a full-length opera, which is huge for me.
I am so excited to get to be the person on stage using a mobility aid in an opera
that I never saw when I was watching and consuming opera growing up.
It's an immense privilege.
I'm getting fitted
for my period-appropriate mobility aid
soon in one of our next rehearsals because, of course,
mobility aids are period-appropriate for any period in which an opera can be set
and
so there's no reason to say, Oh, well, you can't use that because that doesn't go
with what the 19th century esthetic of X opera or Y opera.
Well, people needed mobility aids for as long as there have been people.
Anyway, bit of a tangent.
I just get very, very excited about being
that person up on stage with a mobility aid.
That's very good. In a period piece.
Yeah, I'm so excited.
Then I am directing Hansel and Gretel with Crescendo Operatic Society at
the Surrey Annex Theater from June 21st to 23rd.
The Crescendo Operatic Society is
an educational space, sort of showing people -
Teaching people from both inside and out, so from the perspective of the singer
and the perspective of the audience, to love opera.
A lot of the people who are singing there are new to opera.
When they first walked in, were really scared about the idea and are
now really embracing doing something scary and wonderful.
All of those operas, we rehearse them all masked because,
again, I really believe in that as an access measure.
While all performances end up being unmasked, each singer will be
testing repeatedly and starting testing repeatedly long before the masks come off
to try to make it as safe as possible for all of us.
We also rehearse with high-quality air filters going on, same reason.
All three operas are in English, and Hansel and Gretel will come,
even though it is in English, it will also come with English surtitles.
So yeah, I'm really excited. I think those are all...
I mean, as I said, not everything - not every production
can be "perfect" in terms of accessibility measures.
But if we can start normalizing some of that stuff.
That is a huge and important change
in the operatic world, and I'm really excited to be a part of it.
That's great.
I will post all that information on ArtsAbly's website.
I am so excited.
Me too! [Laughs.]
I could talk about those shows all day.
I'm just so excited about making more accessible art for people.
I know we'll have to end eventually.
I have one last question for you.
It's about inspirations, not in the sense of "inspiration-porn."
We had that a lot. There's a lot of conversations about that
in the disability and arts community, and disability community at large.
But maybe you can think of an artist that inspired you or guided you or
someone who is in the community and is important to you, who would that be?
Oh, yeah, for sure.
In the same video that you were referencing earlier,
Jacquie and I talked about this too, about, you know, like
disabled people aren't inspirational for existing, but disabled people,
like any person, are capable of doing inspirational things.
It's just that going out to get the mail in a disabled body is not inspirational.
But I think it is 100% true to say that every single person
that I have become dear friends with on the internet,
on the internet alone, through the work that I've done in
content creation about disability in the arts has been really precious to me.
That entire community that has grown around conversations about disability
in the arts in the advocacy spaces online, those people are so...
The whole community is precious to me, and the individual people inspire me every day
because they continue to make art that is joyfully
disabled in the face of ableist artistic systems.
And that, as I said, that is an inspiring thing to do
because so much of those ableist structures and systems
that block us, tell us to quit,
tell us that your voice is not valuable, that your voice is not important.
To continue to make art in the face of that type of a barrier.
That's what gets me out of bed in the morning to think about those.
It's true that those people, many of whom, as I said, I've never met in real life,
but with whom I speak online all the time about what they're doing
and about how cool that is, that's really special to me.
But at the same time, I really do only have one answer for this,
and that's my forever partner in operatic crime, Jacquie Ko.
She and I started doing voice lessons together
when we were in elementary school.
We went to the same school and became opera singers together by accident.
But she knew that she was disabled the entire time,
and she knew that she was
growing into a voice that was special and that she wanted to be able to share.
But the community, the operatic world, was just not accessible to her.
So she went, well, I'm going to make my own company that is accessible to me.
As I said earlier, I sort of identified as the healthy one
in that friendship for a really long time before I realized that, well, maybe not.
But if I...
if she hadn't, you know,
been so really stubborn about
knowing that she wanted to be able to present her art,
the systems wouldn't have been in place for when I needed them.
I genuinely don't think that my career
would be the same or my artistic practice would be the same
if Mariposa hadn't existed, and Mariposa wouldn't exist without her.
She's my forever bestie, and also,
in some ways, one of the driving forces behind the way my career currently looks.
That's the answer.
Thank you.
Well, thank you so much.
You can go follow her on Instagram as well.
I will put information about her
in the resource page that will go with your interview.
Good.
I encourage all people to follow and to have a look at all these resources,
Instagram, the YouTube channel, Mariposa, your shows.
Thank you. Yes.
I'm just really glad to be in a space
to be able to make this type of more accessible art and to be able to push
for increasing access for disabled folks in these artistic spaces.
Well, thank you so much for this conversation.
Thank you for letting me rant.
Yeah, it was fantastic.
Thank you so much.
It's always a pleasure to talk about
how we can expose our ideas or make the arts more accessible, generally.
You're a great storyteller and activist in that.
I thank you.
Thank you so much for having me.
Okay. All the best with all your projects.
Thank you so much.
Talk soon, maybe.
Yeah.
Always happy to chat.
Okay. Have a great one.
You too. Bye.
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