She Who Dared, Fri 6/6 7:30 PM and Sun 6/8 3 PM, Chicago Opera Theater at the Studebaker Theater

Rosa Parks was perfect. Dignified, demure, and flawlessly attired in proper-lady skirt suits, she was the ideal plaintiff for a test case challenging the municipal law that stipulated segregated seating on public buses in Montgomery, Alabama. In December 1955, she was arrested for calmly refusing to get up so that a white man could sit, leading to a widely publicized bus boycott initiated by Black women activists and ultimately led by Martin Luther King Jr.  

She Who Dared
Fri 6/6 7:30 PM and Sun 6/8 3 PM, Studebaker Theater, 410 S. Michigan, 312-704-8414, cot.org,, $59.50-$159.50

Parks became a national figure and earned a place in American history. But she wasn’t the first Black person to be arrested in Montgomery for refusing to move when a white passenger wanted their seat on a bus, and it wasn’t her case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court and won, effectively ending the segregation that had ruled in the south since the Civil War.

That lawsuit was filed on behalf of Claudette Colvin—who was just 15 years old in March 1955 when she refused to surrender her bus seat for a white person—and three other Black women who did the same and were also arrested prior to the Rosa Parks incident. While the Parks case dragged through the Alabama state court system, attorney Fred Gray, supported by the NAACP, filed a federal lawsuit in February 1956, with Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Mary Louise Smith, and Susie McDonald as plaintiffs.

That case, known as Browder v. Gayle (Montgomery mayor W.A. Gayle was named as lead defendant), was decided in favor of the four women in district court and in an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, with judges employing the reasoning that prevailed in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case to conclude that separation by race is unconstitutional. 

She Who Dared, by composer Jasmine Arielle Barnes and librettist Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton, tells the story of these five women—Parks and her four less-known but important predecessors. Commissioned by American Lyric Theater and produced by Chicago Opera Theater, it opened a three-performance world-premiere run at the Studebaker Theater this week. With the single caveat that it could use some tweaking to heighten the drama in the second act, it proved to be an admirably effective, thoroughly enjoyable musical history lesson. 

The casting is astute: Soprano Jasmine Habersham, memorable as the teenage daughter in Lyric Opera’s recent production of Missy Mazzoli’s The Listeners, is equally impressive as a different teen here—the whip-smart, gutsy, and naive Colvin; stunning mezzo-soprano Chrystal E. Williams embodies the more mature and sophisticated activist Browder; and lyric soprano Jacqueline Echols McCarley is a silver-voiced ringer for Rosa Parks. 

The entire cast of seven women, some taking multiple roles, includes Chicago-based mezzo-soprano Leah Dexter as McDonald; soprano and Ryan Center alum Lindsey Reynolds as Smith; mezzo-soprano Deborah Nansteel as key activist Jo Ann Robinson; and mezzo-soprano Cierra Byrd as reluctant participant Jeanetta Reese. Their ensemble numbers are highlights.

The score, which includes an ode to the Fourteenth Amendment and a Broadway-ready rouser of an opening number, is a hearty stew with a base of traditional opera liberally seasoned with soul, gospel, midcentury pop influences, and more. Designer Junghyun Georgia Lee’s cleverly bisected bus is all the set this story needs, and the program book includes an excellent historical essay by Mouton and Chicago Opera Theater general director Lawrence Edelson. Timothy Douglas directs; Michael Ellis Ingram conducts pianist Lara Bolton and members of Chicago’s Black chamber music collective D-Composed.

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