Getting to Welcome

Theaterhound
Aug 8, 2017 · 8 min read

I had a revelation recently about the performing arts. I am lucky to live in New York City where art lurks on every corner, but I didn’t have this revelation in an auditorium or in front of a jazz combo playing for tips in Central Park. The thought came to me at a desk on the fourth floor of the Metropolitan Opera where I was working on visa petitions for our artists.

The petitions, sometimes in excess of 100 pages each, are small paper mountains to the casual observer. To me, they are meticulously produced and edited stories of individual singers, directors, choreographers, and production team members, each narrative months in the making. While a singer is poised in front of a practice room piano thousands of miles away, drilling a particularly tricky section of recitative, I am at work in the heart of Lincoln Center making the case that her voice deserves to be heard in this country. This is how I make my living and, importantly, how I find fulfillment. I am one year out of college, where I majored in music and minored in business, dreaming of a career in arts administration and the chance to be part of moving a great music organization forward. This work has given me renewed appreciation for the extraordinary effort required of so many to produce those moments for an audience that you hope will last a lifetime.

According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), an O-1B visa (the visa type for which we most typically apply) is designated for “individuals with an extraordinary ability in the arts.” Of course, given the thorough vetting process for all non-citizens who wish to make a living in this country, it is not enough for an organization like the Met to simply vouch for an artist’s ability. My boss and I must prove, by providing the Met’s stamp of approval along with the approval of external sources, that our artists are the best that opera has to offer and will contribute to raising the cultural bar in this country. We do this by sending the government individualized compendiums for our artists. Each of these files includes a mass of documents: official government forms containing a slew of personal information, proof of a valid passport, a consultation letter from a labor group or relevant arts service organization (American Guild of Musical Artists, International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Opera America, League of American Orchestras), a statement from the Met detailing the artist’s unique skill set and biographical information, copies of all available work documents from previous U.S. engagements, a detailed itinerary accounting for the entire block of time the artist will spend in the country, a copy of the artist’s contract with the Met, and a collection of press reviews detailing special achievements (such as Grammy wins) and particularly compelling performances. From these documents a detailed story emerges, often one of an individual’s extraordinary perseverance and gifts, a powerful combination that we hope will carry them here, to one of the world’s great opera houses.

We typically begin our visa preparations in November, just as fall turns to winter, knowing that some production teams will arrive to the Met for technical rehearsals in early August of the following year. This gives us time to compile personal and biographical data from all of our artists, following a chronological order based on rehearsal start date, before we begin crafting individual petitions to send to our regional USCIS service center in St. Albans, Vermont for adjudication. While most of my colleagues are in full swing from September through May, when the Met has productions onstage, my busiest time is in the summer months when the building is quiet, as this is when we take all the information we have compiled in the fall and winter and start the petitions in earnest. That’s not to say late summer and early fall leave time for an extended vacation. Another facet of my job is managing administrative operations for the Met’s Executive Stage Director, David Kneuss, and a staff of 17–20 in-house and visiting directors during the season. With the guidance of my boss and mentor, Brian Hurst, I handle their ticketing needs, oversee efficient tracking of all their scores and extensive library of show binders — which they create from scores and stage plots, notating blocking, acting moments, and choreography for each production, used for future remounting, or revivals, of the operas — and assist with their contracting and yearly budget. This is the more glamorous half of my job, which allows me to interact with the world’s best stage directors, who constantly keep Brian and me on our toes and ensure that, blessedly, no two days are alike. My busy season, however, truly begins when Brian and I take all the information we have received from our artists and their agents and use it to synthesize the most persuasive arguments in favor of O-1B visas.

During the summer months I transform into a full-blown cheerleader. I spend days immersed in the career of a single artist, often listening to his or her recordings as motivation while I work or as light research while I cook dinner at home each night. These artists come from all over the world. Germany, Italy, China, the Republic of Georgia, Australia, South Korea, and the list goes on. Sometimes weeks but often months later, when I have a government Approval Notice for the petition in my hand, the feeling of relief and satisfaction makes all the painstaking research and editing worth the effort. Though I am only a year out of college, and often the junior of the artists for whom I apply, I tell friends that I bizarrely feel like a proud parent when I sit in the auditorium months later and watch one of our performers onstage.

While we prioritize working ahead of schedule, we are often faced with unforeseen, urgent circumstances. The nature of the performing arts requires arts administrators to be alert and always prepared with a contingency plan, and the need for this is twofold when dealing with immigration regulations. In my time at the Met, Brian and I have dealt with last minute substitutions (singers fall ill), date changes (contracts can shift), and dozens of other immigration issues that seem like crises at the time but are often easily sorted with some quick work and ingenuity. In many instances we have to scramble to prepare a last minute visa petition (a task that usually takes months) in a week, and sometimes we have to enlist the help of our US Senator to monitor a particularly time-sensitive petition. To me, there is a kind of soothing effect to the cliché “the show must go on.” When a singer’s visa is mistakenly invalidated at the airport, or a petition comes back with a dreaded RFE (a request for evidence, which often means we must start a new petition from scratch, creating a second mountain of paper to secure the O1-B status) instead of an outright approval, I repeat these words to myself and know that hard work in the final stretch will ensure that our audience has the magical experience they deserve. Though this behind-the-scenes immigration scramble, if executed to perfection, is never apparent to our patrons, it is one of the things that is rewarding about what I do. I love being able to lay claim to a small piece of the backstage work that makes our productions what they are.

I also love the sleek travertine exterior of the opera house, and the way my colleagues greet me warmly every morning. I am proud that the cultural impact of our productions extends beyond the city limits of New York, providing opera lovers across the country with live transmissions of shows directly to movie theaters. What I have come to value most about the Met, however, is a steadfast commitment to exposing American opera-goers to singers they would normally only be able to hear in the great opera houses of Europe.

As for that revelation. In the summer of 2014, I was a college intern in the office in which I now work. I had a short explanation prepared for friends and family who asked what I did. Eyes sometimes wandered when I tried to convey why what we did was meaningful, personally fulfilling, even. When a friend incorrectly assumed the “visa applications” I was completing were for artists’ credit cards, not work documents, I didn’t bother to correct her. What would have been the point?

But lately when I tell people what I do, I rarely need to explain the importance of the visa process or the difficulties of securing legal work status for a non-citizen. I notice a shift in body language as my conversation partner moves closer and nods solemnly, as if in solidarity. Most will ask how the process has changed under the new administration. Some will even rattle off specific visa classifications gleaned from articles about the guest worker program or about a certain highly-covered conference for wealthy Chinese investors. I don’t need positive reinforcement to know that the work is important, and it never bruised my ego when my job description was met with polite apathy, but I am thankful that, if nothing else, recent global events have brought about a new hunger for information about this important process in our country. I believe this signals an interest in global connectivity. And isn’t connectivity to those of different backgrounds, and from different countries, the reason we so urgently need the performing arts? Now, more than ever, I believe engaging with the best artists from around the globe is of vital importance if we are to understand and appreciate one another. I don’t have any fantasy that music alone will save us. But if music is the universal language, shouldn’t we take this time to listen? There’s my revelation. Now, back to those visa petitions.

Caroline Kagan is a Production Assistant at the Metropolitan Opera. A recent graduate, Caroline had the honor of interning at many leading arts organizations while in college, including the American Repertory Theater, University Musical Society, the Ravinia Festival, Michigan Opera Theatre, and, of course, the Metropolitan Opera. Caroline is a proud Chicago native, and an equally proud alumna of the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance (Go Blue!)

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