“It is better than an opera!”
Ivey Barr: WordPress Developer & Opera Singer
Employee at Online Optimism
What the“non-artistic” career looks like:
Sometimes I build websites (with the rest of my team!), but often, my role centers around addressing a particular feature or problem that we're not sure how to handle. I'll think through the desired behavior and come up with "pseudocode", writing out the steps in a way that loosely mirrors the structure of the code I'll eventually write for it, and then write and edit the code until it works exactly the way I have in mind. It's like having a conversation with someone whose language you've just begun learning (and who's very, very literal about how they interpret what you say!).
A Problem-Solving Success
Most of my dev successes are like stage manager successes — they happen behind the scenes and nobody notices because they just look like things working properly! One particular pride point from the last year was developing an attribution modal (pop-up) from scratch that mimics what you might see on a stock photo site like Pexels — it pops up when someone clicks to save an image, grabs the photographer's name from the image's data and plugs it into the pop-up text, grabs a link back to the image from the image's data and plugs that in too, and then asks you if you'd like to click to copy the generated text and add an attribution to [Artist'sName]'s photo at [link to image on site]. It looks very simple in practice, but there are a lot of moving parts behind it!
Your Background In The Arts:
I grew up in a musical family and church, and was first onstage at age 4. I've performed in plays, musicals, and eventually operas almost every year from middle school up until 2020, with a particular focus on exploring gender and the big emotions that feel like too much to share in regular life.
A Theatrical Success:
My favorite opportunities are when I'm collaborating with creative peers on independent passion projects! In winter 2019 just before the pandemic hit, I got to perform a dream role with a dream team — at the college opera company I helped found, we produced Mozart's lesser-known opera La Clemenza di Tito and I sang the lead mezzo-soprano role, which I'd wanted to sing for at least 3 years at that point. I also helped develop the English script and story adaptation, placing it in a modern-day business world full of social media and surveillance, with Rachel Davies (who had previously sung the lead mezzo-soprano role and here directed with brilliant insight and craftsmanship) and Avanti Dey (who sang Vitellia, the lead soprano role), whom I'd met on previous productions and who were equally fascinated with the drama, unhealthy relationships, and glorious heartbreaking music. In rehearsal we were joined by Kayla Hildebrand, who handled the violence and intimacy choreography that underpinned those relationships with an unparalleled attention to both to safe and healthy acting technique and to the dramatic details of the story. Working on that show was one of the best theatrical experiences of my life, and it now informs how I take care of myself physically and mentally in any role.
In a more recent parallel, I met Katie Procell when we were working on Peach State Opera Company's Le Nozze di Figaro, and now she and I are doing a duo recital of Shakespeare songs and arias this September! (If you'll be in Atlanta on the 10th, get your tickets here!)
If Your Life Were A Musical, What Would the Title Be?
"Make It Happen"!
Why You “Do Both”
First and foremost, I need a steady job. The theater industry is infamous for underpaying folks, and even the well-paid jobs eventually come to an end and leave you looking for another one. Opera in particular is rife with predatory opportunities and hidden/assumed costs, like audition fees. As a web developer, I know that as long as I'm working my 9-5, I'm getting a regular paycheck that enables me to pay for not just rent, but voice lessons, travel, a place to stay during a production in another city. On a cheerier note, I love the balance of analyzing details and solving mysteries at one job and grounding myself in the feel of my body and the sprawl of my emotions in the other.
Where Your Two Paths Connect
The detail-oriented thinking that helps me spot a missing semicolon breaking my code also helps me spot incorrect rhythms or pitches in my music! The languages also intersect in a really fascinating way. If I'm singing a role in Italian, I'm going to think into the poetic Italian syntax, shaping my dynamics to match the flow of my words in their true order rather than in the order in which their literal English translations would appear: I'm not singing "I'll do anything you wish," I'm singing "quel che vorrai, farò!" In the same way, when I'm writing something with jQuery and CSS, I'm not really thinking "The search bar should drop down if someone clicks here", I'm thinking "Whenever this button is clicked: toggle the class 'active' onto or off of the search bar element. For the search bar element, as soon as you exist: put yourself outside the regular flow of traffic and 100 pixels below where you would have originally existed, and be zero pixels tall — then, when you have the class 'active': grow to 100% of your height!"
The Hardest Part of Doing Both
Right now, it's making the hard decisions about how much risk I can take in an ongoing pandemic. Under normal circumstances, though, it's really all about finding time to rest before my brain or body forces me to! I have a strong tendency to hyperfocus both when I'm excited and when I'm stressed, so my response to both is to do more instead of resting and recharging. Self-care is accepting that I can rest before my to-do list is completed!
What Drives You
I want to understand things, personally, and I want to share what I understand with other people so we can understand together. Whenever I finally hit on a solution in my code, I always want to explain the solution to the person who asked me to fix it, even if they're just happy it works! And when I have a deep love for a character or a piece of music, I want to develop my portrayal to the point that the people who watch it will feel something close to what I feel — the ardor, the darkness, the glee, the awe. The gratitude and love for everything that has to come together for these perfect moments to exist.
3 Quick Tips For Someone Trying To “Do Both”
1. Commit to your artistic practice time. Don't tell yourself you'll practice after you've loaded the dishwasher and put the laundry in and taken out the recycling — there will always be something that feels like you really should take care of it before you "get" to practice, and if you listen to it, you will never find time to practice.
2. Don't compare paths. You may have sparkly amazing friends who can do theatre full-time, and that's awesome! If your financial, physical, or whatever-other situation is not going to allow you to do that right now, acknowledge it, and know that it's not a reflection on you or your worth as an artist. Use what you've got, do what you can, and keep improving your own art.
3. Get enough sleep whenever you can! Late nights happen but your voice needs sleep, your brain needs sleep, your body needs sleep, and you will have a much better time in general if you try to get enough sleep.
Get To Know Ivey
Dream Acting Role:
I will learn to play guitar if it means I get to play Orpheus in Hadestown.
Your Type/Genre
Impetuous, driven young men with so many emotions they've gotta sing 'em!
College/Graduate School & What You Studied:
Arts & Technology at The University of Texas at Dallas
Three People That Support You
My wonderful partner and her keen ears, first and foremost; my musical mom and siblings; and my voice teacher!
If you were a website design aesthetic, what would you be?
I'd be one of those clean, minimal aesthetics with unexpected hand-drawn illustrations.
