AccScience Publishing / AC / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/AC025130014
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ARTICLE

The hero-villain binary as a queer construct in Stewart Wallace’s Harvey Milk Reimagined

Andrew Sutherland1 ,  Maria E. Kallionpää2*
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1 Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Perth, Western Australia
2 KreativInstitut.OWL, Hochschule für Musik Detmold, Detmold, Germany
AC, 025130014 https://doi.org/10.36922/AC025130014
Received: 24 March 2025 | Revised: 2 August 2025 | Accepted: 5 August 2025 | Published online: 3 September 2025
© 2025 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
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Abstract

Stewart Wallace’s opera Harvey Milk Reimagined depicts the assassination of one of the first openly gay politicians in the United States. The depiction of LGBTQ activists reflects the period of the Stonewall Riots and the earliest demonstrations following the events on Christopher Street. An analysis of Michael Korie’s libretto uncovered three important overarching themes: activism, identity, and othering. Wallace’s score also engages with each of these themes, primarily through the depiction of Dan White as the villainous homophobe in stark contrast to the predominantly gay cast. The ensemble is given moments of humor, popular culture references, and a variety of musical techniques to position them on the “right side of history.” Harvey Milk Reimagined occupies a place in the growing operatic repertoire by openly queer composers. While queer theorists reject binary categorization, the opera presents a distinct binary polarization between the queer community and its supporters and the straight community, raising questions of social agenda, heterophobia, and queer discourse.

Keywords
Queer theory
Opera
Gender
Binaries
Queer aesthetics
Activism
Identity
Funding
None.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
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Arts & Communication, Electronic ISSN: 2972-4090 Published by AccScience Publishing
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