These events are held in strict accordance with CDC guidelines for social distancing. Face Masks are required to be worn at all times.

Florida Grand Opera will produce Fellow Travelers and is including a community outreach and educational component through Community Conversations. These events introduce the themes from the opera and their connections to topics that are relevant, timely, and speak to the experiences of the diverse LBGTQ+ community. Community Conversation will be held at the Center for Spiritual Living in Oakland Park.

Through this series, FGO enriches its audience’s operatic experience by integrating the themes of the Made for Miami opera Fellow Travelers with issues of relevance and importance to the community in a series of thought-provoking discussions. These hour-long events partner with other regional cultural organizations such as Equality Florida, SunServe, HRC, Pride Center at Equality Park, Pride South Florida, and TransSocial Group. All are working for the future of the LGBTQ+ community. These unique presentations will offer numerous discussion points upon which lively and meaningful dialogue will take place.

Fellow Travelers is composed by Gregory Spears. The opera is set during the McCarthy era of the 1950s and focuses on the “lavender scare,” a witch-hunt and mass firings of gay people from the United States government. The story centers on the love affair between two men working for the federal government—Hawkins “Hawk” Fuller, a State Department official, and Timothy Laughlin, a recent college graduate working in a senator’s office.

FGO Studio Artists will also be part of the program performing selections from the opera.

Fellow Travelers and Community Conversations are sponsored in part by the Arts Projects funding category from the National Endowment for the Arts. Funding for this project was also provided in part by the Broward County Board of County Commissioners as recommended by the Broward Cultural Council.