8 | productionnote
Notes on the Production WRITTEN BY
Julia Brown Simmons PHOTOS BY
Erich Schlegel for Austin Opera
Steve Jobs (John Moore) from Austin Opera’s production from February this year.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.” Steve Jobs shared this idea with the 2005 Stanford University graduating class in a commencement speech that is often touted as one of the most watched in history. In his remarks, Jobs described to the students his life story—how he dropped out of college only to later drop in on college classes that looked interesting to him. He encouraged Stanford students to do as he did—not to drop out of college, per se, but to trust their guts and trust what they love—assuring students that the dots of their lives would ultimately connect. This concept—the ability to see connections and patterns with clarity only in retrospect—provides a lens through which to understand Mason Bates and Mark Campbell’s opera The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs—an opera that follows the Apple co-founder as he looks back on his life and career and confronts his own mortality.
atlantaopera.org | @theatlantaopera
