#lit. Great Zhell’s falling/collapse?

[ranahan]

So the headcanons,

You know the popular canon? fanon? that mandos have to exaggerate their body language to compensate for not being able to read each other’s faces? Well, I think the kabuki comparison might be spot on in that on stage—where the audience is quite far away from the actors—the actors would have to exaggerate even more. Which would naturally lead to big dramatic gestures, perhaps even codified ones.

Of course, most Mando characters are dressed in armour. Which leads to popular characters being very recognisable by their armour paint. Which may or may not be historically accurate, but nevertheless, even millennia later everyone and their uncle thinks they know how Cassus Vhett and Canderous Ordo painted their armour. Because they’ve seen them dozens of times. For other characters, colours are used symbolically.

Characters from other cultures might also be codified/exaggerated in their gestures and costumes. Maybe everyone wears some kind of a mask, helmet or otherwise? Sometimes—especially in the older plays—it gets somewhat xenophobic, with no clear line between fictional monsters and members of other civilisations. I’m thinking of basiliskans, nevoota, etc. Much as I love mandos, historically I can’t see them treat e.g. basiliskans as fully sentient or nevoota as much different than vampires/werevolwes/alien monsters. Newer playwrights would have tried to rewrite those plays and grapple with that baggage in other ways.

Not all of the dance numbers are based on martial arts… but a lot of them are basically choreographed fights. The dancers pull red (or whatever colour of blood is appropriate) ribbons and scarves out from under the armour of their opponents and from the handles of their weapons, which will continue to whirl around as they dance until they are dramatically killed.

And yes, characters usually take many hits before they finally succumb for extra drama. Also there’s dramatic dialogue, which always causes some groans and jeers of “just kill him already” from the audience, because mandos don’t much hold with the western convention of audience sitting still and silently and only politely clapping at the end. There’s cheers and boos after just about every scene, and people only sush others during the most suspenseful moments. Also there’s beer, and skraan’ikase, and perhaps gambling. Just look up Italian opera houses during the heydays of 1700s—they weren’t the sit still and quiet kind of affairs either.

The most common role that the Mandalorian opera choir plays is the army, or the ori’ramikade of whatever Mand’alor stars in the play in question. Which naturally leads to there being a lot of rhythmic stomping and beating of stage weapons and each other’s armour. There’s at least as much percussion as there’s singing or chanting; gauntlets have plates/strikers on the palm to make more sound. And a great deal more actual acrobatics than vocal acrobatics. Audience joins in during the most popular and beloved scenes/songs.

The second most common choir is a troupe of children, usually from the local community or a local school, that perform one number or song. Sometimes it’s not even a song from the same opera, but no-one cares. They’re everyone’s favourite and kids get to learn about theatre, it’s a win-win!

Opera usually involves more showy mythosaur axes and glaives and swords than blasters. Jetpacks are only involved during outdoor shows though. Because they’re a fire hazard with the sets. But opera is also performed outdoors especially during festivals, and then you really get acrobatic/aerial duels and pyrotechnics. Pyrotechnics and fire dances with their callback to the fires of stars are terribly popular. Theatre is a surprisingly common hobby among the demolition experts. Sabine is a genius, but maybe she also had some stage manuals to pull from when designing artistically colourful explosions.

There’s at least one haunting bes’bev solo, or sometimes a duet with a singer. Sometimes lovers separated by time and space sing duets where one of them is on the stage and the other is either represented by a bes’bev or signs from somewhere off-stage. Sometimes making a dramatic return from the behind of the audience, walking through the audience while singing, and then climbing on the stage for reuniting with their lover. It’s a whole motif.

Sometimes certain songs or battle numbers become so popular that they get copy-pasted into different works wherever the play needs “a dramatic battle��� or “a tearful reunion.” Sometimes they become so iconic that they will always be identified as the duel of Mandalore the Indomitable and Ulic Qel-Droma though, and can’t be reused anywhere else because they’re too recognisable.

Mandalorians don’t much hold with storing their works of art unchanged in naphthalene either. Sure, there are classics that have more or less attained their ultimate form already, but it’s expected that each company and actor puts their own spin on their performance. What art is there in exactly copying something that’s already been done, after all? Copying is for apprentices, creating is for artists. No two performances are alike, at least not any good ones. Improvisation is considered a vital skill in arts like singing, playing, acting and dancing.

I think that jaster mereel fucking loves both the concord dawn blues or whatever they’re playing with their beskar instruments there…but he also got autistically into mandalorian opera as a little kid and thingy absolutely hates that shit and as jaster died he’s like I never should have trusted him, he has no taste in music