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The Leadership Dance
Ep. 9: Facing fear and finding your voice, with Cerise Lim Jacobs
00:46:21
In Episode 9 of The Leadership Dance, Cerise Lim Jacobs shares her remarkable journey from a traditional upbringing in Singapore to becoming the founder of the activist opera company, White Snake Projects. She discusses the cultural influences of her...
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- [00:03]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
I ran away from home when I was 18 or 19. And I think one of the things I would say to myself is, don't be afraid. Because of course I think I've been afraid my whole life. I'm still, to be perfectly honest, I'm still afraid, you know, because the future is so uncertain and there's so many things in our world now. The other thing is, don't be afraid. And if you are afraid, it's okay, because fear can always be overcome. Or if not overcome, you can always work with it looming over you. I'm living proof of that. You can do what you need to do despite that.
- [00:52]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Leadership Dance. I'm Alisa sue lynch, and today I'm excited to welcome Cerise Lim Jacobs as my guest. Cerise is founder of the nation's leading activist opera company, White Snake Projects. After retiring from a 20 year career in law, specializing in criminal defense and patent litigation and serving as a federal Prosecutor at the U.S. attorney's office in Boston, Cerise, who had no background in opera, wrote her first libretto as a birthday gift to her husband. That opera, Madame Whitesnake, went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in music. After that success, she founded Whitesnake Projects, the nation's leading activist opera company dedicated to commissioning, developing and producing original opera. Committed both to the highest production values and to social activism. A native of Singapore who graduated from Harvard Law School and currently calls Boston home, Cerise has been recognized as one of top 30 professionals of the Year by Musical America and one of Boston's 100 most influential people of color by the Boston Globe. Welcome to the podcast, Cerise.
- [02:03]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
I'm thrilled to be invited to join you in this conversation.
- [02:07]
Alisa Sue Lynch
So, Cerise, you have had such a fascinating life, transitioning from a career in law to then founding a successful opera company, Whitesnake Projects. I want to hear all about your journey, but let's start from the beginning. You were born in Singapore into a traditional Chinese family. Can you tell us what your childhood was like in Singapore and how did that shape you?
- [02:29]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
Well, I was born in Singapore during British colonial times, so I'm probably one of the few people who actually have lived under colonial rule. I think that the combination of living under colonial rule and being part of a traditional Chinese culture has really shaped who I am both positively and negatively. I don't know how many people know what it is like to be born into a traditional Chinese family. And I'm not talking in the 21st century. Okay? I'm talking back, way back when it is a difficult culture for any woman who wants to be independent or to want to have aspirations beyond the home to navigate, you know, it's because the expectations are always, yes, you're going to study hard and be a good student, but no, you cannot have a real profession because no man will want to marry you if you are just obsessed with your career. That was always front and center in my life. And of course, growing up with a colonial past, we are always as people of color, viewed as lesser and unfair. Fortunately, most people who have been colonized grow up with those attitudes that we are lesser, that we have masters who know what is best for us and who will dictate our destiny. So it's those kinds of issues that have dogged me my whole life. Now, on the positive side, I think that my Asian heritage is so colorful that we have got so many wonderful celebrations. I cannot talk enough about food. Yes, Singapore, yes, I am totally chili crab, chili crab, Hainanese chicken rice, char Kway Teow. I mean, it can just go on and on and on and on. And you know, the Hainanese chicken rice. I believe that Singapore is the only place that has a Michelin steak da hawker stall selling chicken rice. So that, in a nutshell, was the environment I grew up with. Very, you know, we lived a lot on the streets, very informal, very colorful, you know, we celebrated everybody's festivals, you know, and that has a lot to do with my view on world mythology because I grew up in Singapore where we had four main cultures. We had Western culture, of course, from our colonizers. We had the Chinese culture, we had the Malay culture, and we had the Indian culture. And we all celebrated each other's holidays and festivals and ate each other's food. And that resulted in a very broad view of mythology, which is something that I'm passionate about and which imbues all my work.
- [05:37]
Alisa Sue Lynch
And did you grow up speaking multiple languages as well?
- [05:40]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
What was that like at home, we spoke English, Malay, Cantonese. And at school, I was. I started off in a Chinese language school, but was moved into a missionary school, a Methodist missionary school run by Americans because of the communist infiltration of the Chinese speaking school schools. And my parents felt that it would be easier for me to reject religion at some point in my life versus reject Communism because even from the beginning, I guess they could see that there was something obsessive or fanatical in my makeup. I know. So I was switched from a Chinese school to an English language school and we all had to study two other languages. The national language, which was Malay, and the Chinese, which is Mandarin, Putong hua, the dialect.
- [06:42]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Wow. Yeah. That's so foreign to, I think, those of us who grew up as Chinese Americans in the United States, where, you know, I'm not fluent in Chinese, even though my parents did speak at home to each other and I had to study Mandarin or I decided to study Mandarin in college, but never really got as fluent as if you grow up speaking multiple languages. So, Cerise, your family left Singapore when you were 16 years old. Can you tell us why did you leave and where did you go? And then how did you eventually end up in the United States?
- [07:15]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
Wow, that covers years and years and years of my life. So let me try to be concise during this period of time. When I was growing up, it was a very turbulent social and political time for Southeast Asia. The British Empire had declared bankruptcy and so had withdrawn from the area. And, you know, they had so many colonial possessions. And the way the British work is that when they leave, they don't give a thought to what the people that they've colonized want. They just decide, okay, we're gonna form this conglomerate of countries which we are gonna call, in my case, it was the Federation of Malaysia. So Singapore was part of Malaysia at the same time the Americans were withdrawing from Vietnam. And what that meant for the region was that with the two colonial powers, the Americans and the British leaving the area, there was a huge power vacuum. And that caused again, at that point in time, everybody was afraid of the so called communist threat coming down south. And to fill that vacuum, and because the British willy nilly left the so called Federation of Malaysia, which included what is now current day Malaysia and Singapore, they didn't realize that by putting all these countries together, they had upset the racial balance. So the Chinese have always been viewed as the Jews of the east because we've always been viewed as people who are very good with business and all of that because of our work ethic. But the political power resides in the hands of the Malay people. And when Singapore joined Malaysia, the racial balance was tipped so that the Chinese became 51%. And there was widespread rioting. A lot of killing, a lot of gangs started appearing, offering protections. And my family saw that they didn't. This is not an environment they wanted to live in. So they left. We went to Australia, which some people might say going from the frying pan into the fire, because at that time Australia had a white Australia policy. And of course we're not white.
- [09:31]
Alisa Sue Lynch
And what did that mean? Tell me more about that it meant.
- [09:34]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
Then that if you were white, you could just enter Australia as an immigrant, but if you were not white, you had to prove that you had skill sets that they wanted or you had pay money as an investment into the country. But sort of socially, what it meant was that the Australians were not used to living with people who didn't look like them. And so it was racially difficult. When I was in school, I went to another missionary school. I had one year there and I remember very clearly being put into the so called Asian class, segregated from the mainstream. So it's that kind of thing, you know, where they know how to deal with people who are of different races.
- [10:22]
Alisa Sue Lynch
And then when did you leave Australia? I think you ended up in the UK first?
- [10:26]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
Yes, during my time in Australia, I graduated after one year and I got into the University of Melbourne and I asked my parents if I could move out of the home to be in the dorms. And they said absolutely not being very traditionally Chinese. No. So at that time I took matters into my own hands and I sat for a scholarship exam and I got a scholarship to St Hilda's College, which is a woman's residential college. And I told my parents, okay, I don't need you to pay for this because I got the scholarship and I'm leaving. And I left. I met my first husband who was a, let me get this right, theoretical intermediate energy nuclear physicist. And I knew him for six months. Then he had to leave to go to Oxford, England on a Queen Elizabeth II fellowship. And I started to work as a waitress in order to save up enough money to visit him on the April vacation. And during that period of time again, to show you how insular and protective it is to be a Chinese daughter, my father asked my mother to ask me how much money I was making at my waitressing job because he would pay me not to work. Wow. Because no daughter of his should be seen working in a restaurant. And I said no, because even at that time I understood that if you're relying on somebody else to pay your way, you are subject. You'll never get out from under their thumb. So I said no. I earned my own money. I went to Oxford. It was meant to be two weeks, but I ended up staying for the rest of my life.
- [12:22]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Did you have any siblings, Cerise? I'm wondering if.
- [12:25]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
I have two sisters and a brother. And I left them all. I dropped out of school. School. I became a bum, meaning I had no education and no real job. I did odd jobs, I audited many, many courses. At Oxford, because, of course, it's a center of learning, and it was wonderful. I enjoyed writing and literature and playwriting, and I audited all these classes, went to see every show I could. Yeah, that's how I spend the first three to four years of my married life. Just being a bum.
- [13:00]
Alisa Sue Lynch
You had said to me earlier you ran away from home and the way you've described also just your search for independence takes a lot of bravery and courage at a young age. So it's good you had the support of your husband, but I imagine you didn't really know anybody else when you moved to a new country and had to establish yourself. So you ended up working for a couple of years. What happened next? Because you eventually ended up getting a college degree and then a law degree.
- [13:28]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
That's right. So after two years in Oxford, we were supposed to go back to Australia, where he had a teaching position. But with the change of government in Australia, the position vanished, you know, in the budget cuts and reshuffling. So we were essentially stuck in Oxford with no place to go, no job, no nothing. And at that time, one of Jeffrey's colleagues, physics colleagues, he was a Polish man who had been a member of Solidarity, the union in Poland, and he had jumped ship in New York City and got political asylum. So he understood very well what it meant to not have a country and not have a home. And so he, at that time was a professor at Michigan State University, and he sponsored. He got the university to sponsor us to come to America. So our life in America was sheer happenstance. It wasn't planned. It's the story of my life. Everything just happens without any planning, without any prediction on any of our parts that, you know, our life path is going to be American. I've never been to America, so that was the first for me.
- [14:45]
Alisa Sue Lynch
And it sounds like when you first left Australia, you also somewhat rejected college, right, because you. You quit college to move to Oxford, Were studying there, taking classes. But what led you to decide to then get your undergraduate degree?
- [15:04]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
I didn't want to. I mean, you see, I myself, okay, looking back with my upbringing, with the emphasis on education. Education, you know, cultural emphasis on education and on being driven, I don't even know how I could make the decision to just drop out and essentially follow my thought, you know, because I was in love with this man. And after I decided to stay in Oxford and marry him, my family just cut me off financially. So we were literally on our own. I don't know how I made that decision. I don't know why I made the decision. All I can think about now, looking back, is that the urge to explore who I really was without always feeling that I had to be submissive to somebody else is what drove me to do that. Though at the time, when you're 18 or 19, these thoughts don't come clearly to you.
- [16:10]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Mm. Yeah. Yeah. And it must be very scary, too, to step out on your own like that.
- [16:16]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
Surprisingly, I never gave any thought to the consequences. It's the sort of my. I talked about this while. The ignorant optimism of having no life experience and thinking, I can do this, even though now when I look back, it's like, I could never do that. Never.
- [16:37]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Yeah, I say that again. So the ignorant optimism of not having any experience, I like that because I think that's what causes people, particularly when we're younger, to just have big dreams and go for it. And I feel like sometimes things change as we get older and get more responsibilities and all of that. So I really like that. So then you ended up attending University of Pittsburgh. I know you mentioned you actually graduated quite quickly in two years.
- [17:07]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
Right. And I have my first husband to thank for that, because when we were traveling all over the United States, because I was essentially following him around from job to job to job. And when we landed at Pittsburgh, he said to me, okay, we have two years here, Cerise. You have to stop being a bar. You really have to make something of your life. And I said, no, I don't. I'm perfectly happy the way I am. And he said, no, you're not. And I said, yes, I am. And so, kicking and screaming, he enrolled me at the University of Pittsburgh, first day of school, to make sure that I actually attended class. He drove me to the school, took me to the class, sat there while I sat in the class, and then until I got the hang of it. And, you know, the reason I didn't want to go back to school was essentially a basic insecurity about whether I was going to be able to do this. People who haven't grown up in America don't understand how confident Americans are or appear to other people. So Americans, for me, they always seem to have an opinion. They always seem to be fearless about expressing that opinion, whether or not they're right or wrong. They don't care. Everything wrong. Whereas, you know, growing up with my background, where our Asian education relies a lot on rote learning, so we become very good at memorization, of being able to regurgitate back the text that we've read, it does not necessarily Equate to true knowledge. So we excel. At least I excelled, given my educational training in examination. But when I'm asked for an original thought, give an opinion about something, since I had never been thought to think for myself, because the educational system forces you into submission where teachers don't want to know what you think. They just want to know that, you know, that there are five continents or six continents or however many, you know, just, just the facts that you memorize. And so because Americans appeared to me always to be able to have an opinion about everything, and I had no opinions, if you were to say to me, what do you think, Cerise? I would say, I honestly don't know.
- [19:39]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Yes. Yeah, that resonates just from the Asian culture perspective, where success is getting the good grades, getting into the right schools. You know, it's. It's very achievement oriented. And it may appear that Americans always have opinions and express them. And I think relative to other cultures, that is true. I lived in China for a while and then in Europe as well. It takes a while to find your own voice and realize that that's actually needed in the world. And so I'd love to just ask you, you know, how did you find your voice? Because clearly you have a strong voice now. Was there a moment in time or was that a gradual process where you just gained your confidence in yourself?
- [20:22]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
I am still working on finding my voice. It's a lifelong project and it, what you see is a working process. Okay, I haven't arrived at my best self yet. Every day I struggle with decision making and question very much my thinking and my attitudes. I think that it's a very gradual process because at that stage, of course, when you're first starting out to try to shake off the shackles of the culture that has inculcated in you a feeling of inferiority or submission, it's very hard to break out of that and to start to have self confidence and to be able to believe that you can do things. I mean, the very first thing is to be able to think for yourself, you know, and for a very long time, my instincts had been suppressed and it took years, decades for me to be able to fully extend my Persona outwards. So I'll give you an example. When I went to law school at Harvard, I think everybody saw that Movie with Ryan O'Neill about Harvard Law School. What was it called? Or Maybe it was 1L, you know, where the professor calls on people. Of course, that was that. That is a truly terrifying experience to be called.
- [21:50]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Yes, the Socratic Method. Yes.
- [21:54]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
So being forced in the moment to think on your feet, you know, so that was three years of hell for me. And then, of course, we've got the whole issue of trying to discover what my real personality is. If I'm not just going to be the submissive daughter, the submissive wife, the submissive friend, you know, the submissive student, who am I? That is a long, long process. And so then I had to make choices. So when I started, after I graduated, I had to decide when I joined this big law firm, and it was all departmentalized. You know, most Asian Americans I know go into estate planning or corporate law, maybe even real estate, because those are transactional. There are very few Asian women, trial lawyers or litigators, because it's a very conflicting kind of position to always be in firing range, Right? You're the target and people are shooting at you. So most Asian Americans shy away from that. But I deliberately chose that as my career path because I knew that that would force me into thinking on my feet, coming out of myself, and articulating in the moment what I really thought. So that was very hard for me. It was a bag of nerves every single time.
- [23:27]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Wow. But it sounds like you love to challenge yourself to learn, and you did it. So you stayed in law for two decades. Did you continue to practice? Were you a criminal lawyer, a trial lawyer for the full 20 years, or did you transition during law? What. What did you learn about yourself while you were a lawyer? I guess you're still a lawyer.
- [23:50]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
Once a lawyer, always a lawyer. I'm a. I call myself a recovering lawyer. I learned that I could stand on my feet, and in order to defend others, I first had to learn to stand up for myself. Because if you're going to advocate for some other person, a client, or the government. When I was a federal prosecutor, you absolutely first have to learn to advocate for yourself. And that was a major step that I took towards self realization. And we also learned that, you know, when you practice law, and that's true across the board, that when you're practicing at a certain level, when you got past sort of the learning stage, the level at which you perform is now at a very creative level. You're now problem solving. You're creating pathways that otherwise did not exist. You're able to make connections which other people might not be able to see. And that is the secret of success.
- [25:00]
Alisa Sue Lynch
I like that. So, Cerise, after 20 years, why did you decide to leave your law career? And did you know what you wanted to do next?
- [25:08]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
As with all Things in my life, Elizabeth, it should be clear by now, things just happen, and I have to deal with it. Okay? So, no, I did not decide to leave my law career at all. So. So at some point during my life, Jeffrey and I, my first husband and I got a divorce. It was just the most wonderful, amicable divorce. And many of our friends said, you guys are so loving to each other, and why you're even more loving than people who stayed married. Like, what's going on here? Why are you getting a divorce? And the simple answer was, because we had outgrown each other. I was 18 or 19 when I married him. He was 28. And that's a huge difference at that time. And during that time, I had closed the sort of age gap, but we had developed in different ways. So then I was on my own for a long time. And then I met Charles and my second husband. And Charles was in the last phase of his life. He was older than I was. He. He had accomplished so much in life, and I love him so much because he was one of the few men that I could have a close relationship who did not feel competitive. Because I acknowledge right up front, and I'm sure many of your listeners this might resonate with that when you're a strong woman discovering your own power, sometimes because of the male and female dynamic, men are somewhat intimidated and feel competitive with you. And Charles never felt that way. He was always 100% supportive of me. But because my career was so demanding, we never had any time together. And because of his age and everything, one day he said to me, you know, he asked me many times, will you resign so that we can spend time together? And I would always say, no, Charles, that's asking too much of me. I've worked too long and too hard that shed too many tears and blood to give this up at a time when I was at the top of my career. He said to me, you know, Cerise, when other fathers were out skiing or swimming or whatever with their families, I was in the office securing the financial. And then he looked at me. I'll never forget it. And he said, is it too late for me now? Have I left my run too late? When will it be my time? And I said to him, you know, Charles, your time is now. And I picked up the phone at that very minute, called my managing partner and said, regina, and resigning my partnership. And of course, there's a dead silence on the other end of the phone, and she said, you know, you're not feeling yourself, Cerise. So I'M going to hold your office just the way it is for six months. Give you a chance to come to your senses. But I never came to my senses.
- [28:14]
Alisa Sue Lynch
You know, I think as you get older, we do reprioritize what's important for us in our lives. And that his perspective enabled you to do that. Now I'm so curious. Like you left this successful career but now you're running an opera company. How in the world did that happen?
- [28:33]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
My background has caused me to be very result oriented and very driven in my search to find out who I am. So after I resigned my partnership, I was actually in crisis because I've worked all my life and my identity is so much bound up in my work. You know, you always talk about how you should have an identity beyond your work life, but that wasn't the case for me. My life before Charles was my work and my son. That was it. There was no room for anything else. So when I suddenly found myself Instead of working 10, 12 hours a day, I would be working zero hours a day. Can you imagine how shocking that is to wake up each day and wonder what the hell am I going to do today? You know? That sent me into huge depression and self examination of who I really was. And so I explored a lot of different things that I could do. One thing I knew for sure was that I never wanted to be engage in something as make work. In other words, it's not something that I really had to do, but I just doing it because I don't have anything else to do. And it's better than doing nothing. I would never compromise my life that way, you know. And so one day I thought to myself, Charles is having a big birthday coming up and he doesn't want stuff. He's not that kind of guy. But he's passionate about opera. She introduced me to. I never had the time or the money really to engage in, you know, watching opera and all of that. But he listened to it day and night 24 7. And I got sucked into this whole thing. So I thought, great, I'll position a short song cycle for him and have that performed in our living room. The next thing you knew, I commissioned an ensemble to help me with this and they couldn't come up with with a topic. So felt the clock ticking by and I woke up one morning, 5am and I sat at the computer and the first draw of what was to become Madame Whitesnake just poured out of me. And when Charles woke up, I waited for him to have his cup of coffee and Then I handed it to him, and he said, what is this cerise? And I said, that's your birthday present.
- [31:02]
Alisa Sue Lynch
That's amazing.
- [31:03]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
And after years of working to bring Madam Whitesnake to life, he turned to me and he said, the next time you say you want to give me a birthday present, remind me to say no.
- [31:16]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Oh, no.
- [31:17]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
Because it was such a hard process. And another example of the optimism of ignorance. Because if I knew what it would be like to have to write an opera and bring it to fruition, you know, full production and everything, I don't think that I would have the thoughts to embark on it.
- [31:39]
Alisa Sue Lynch
But do you think your law degree helped you at all or your career in law helped you in producing this opera? Do you see synergies between the two?
- [31:49]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
Absolutely. It all goes back to what I said about when you achieve excellence at one thing. In this case, it would be the practice of law. Those skill sets, the transferability of excellence. You understand the process of how you became successful at this one thing, and that process can be transferred to another thing. You don't even have to know what the content is of that thing, because the analytical skill sets, the ability to vision point A, B, C, D, E, F is the same. All of these things are the same. The communication skills that I developed as a trial lawyer, you know, being able to get up in front of 12 total strangers and convince them in five minutes that your point of view is the better point of view than the other lawyer's point of view. I mean, you learn how to be succinct. You learn how to reach people in a very intimate way. And all of those skill sets come into building White Snake projects. It's exactly the same set of skills.
- [33:03]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense to me. And I want to transition to. Then talk about Whitesnake projects. So you ended up getting a Pulitzer Prize for Madame Whitesnake and then form Whitesnake Projects, and it's an activist opera company. Tell us, what is an activist opera company, and what kind of impact are you trying to make?
- [33:25]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
The interesting thing about opera is that unlike a lot of other art forms, it is really mired in the past. By that, I mean, the most popular repertory which sells tickets, okay. Are the 18th, 17th, 18th, 19th century rep. And at the time when I got into it, that was still the case. And I realized several things after winning the Pulitzer Prize, that even with that Pulitzer Prize, traditional opera companies would not really listen to me or talk to me. They were not interested because they were not interested in new work. Or certainly work with a different cultural perspective, you know, because opera is right down absolutely white and Eurocentric. And I. So I thought to myself, well, if the more traditional legacy companies are not going to invite me to that table, then I'm just going to have to make my own table and invite others who look like me to join this. So that was essentially the inspiration behind White Snake projects. Its mission, to uplift the voices of people who would otherwise never have the opportunity to be heard. And that. I mean that all across the board. I mean, composers, writers, singers, projection artists, designers, you know, the whole lot of them. We try to create a holistic environment where we can get these diverse groups of people together to tell stories from their lived experience, which are different from traditional repertory.
- [35:14]
Alisa Sue Lynch
I love that. And kudos to you for taking the leap and creating that and making space for other voices. You know, I'm involved in the ballet world and it's similar, Eurocentric, very traditional. Often the classical ballets are the most popular ones, but there is change. And there's also contemporary dance, sort of as the foil, which was started many years ago now, but as a reaction and a rejection of traditional dance forms. So you're really creating that new space in the opera world, which is wonderful.
- [35:48]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
Thank you.
- [35:50]
Alisa Sue Lynch
I'm sure it wasn't easy making your dream a reality. Did you face any barriers on your journey to your many goals throughout your life? Can you talk about some of the barriers or bias that you had to.
- [36:02]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
Overcome with regard to White Snake projects? One of the biggest barriers was myself, because Charles died after the world premiere. So he. He died in October of 2010. And I'm sorry, I'm. Well, so he never lived to see us win the Pulitzer Prize, right? Because we had the world premiere in Boston in March of 2010, and we were going to go. The show was going to go to Beijing for its Asia premiere because a co commissioner was the Beijing Music Festival, which is the largest performing arts festival in Asia. And to the very end, he kept saying to me, we're going to Beijing. We're going to Beijing. And I kept saying, no, no, no, we're not. And then he died three days before the Beijing premiere.
- [36:58]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Oh, my goodness.
- [37:00]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
As I sat with him, a friend of mine who was with me said, cerise, are you going to go to Beijing? And I said, absolutely not. Are you crazy? And then I heard him give me a great big kick in the butt and said, why you think outside the box? You know, because the bottom line is, he said to me, you've done everything Everything that you could for me in life. So, you know, this is the last thing you can do for me in death. Because I want to go to Beijing. I left the hospital, went to the funeral home, made all the funeral arrangements, bought my plane ticket, got on the plane, flew to Beijing, got there, because it takes two days to get there. Got there on the day of the Asia premier, changed my clothes, went to the performance. I don't remember a thing about the performance because I cried throughout the entire performance dedicated to Charles. And got on a plane the next morning, came home, and attended his funeral.
- [37:58]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Wow. But he wanted you to be there, and I'm sure he was there with you.
- [38:04]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
But the reason why I bring this up is to explain why I was one of my biggest obstacles. Because Charles wasn't just my husband and supporter, he was also my artistic partner, the one who truly believed that we could do this, that ordinary people who were not trained in this industry, who never worked in theater or opera, that we could bring real beauty to this world, just as ordinary people. And when I lost that person who was so confident and so certain that this was possible, I only had myself to fall back on. And it's very hard to start a new company when you're totally and utterly alone. So that was one obstacle. The other obstacles were the industry's disbelief, you know, because I had no track record. I was just this. This neophyte. So who says, I want to do this? How many times have people heard that, you know, someone walks in the door and says, I've never done this before, but I'm going to do this. It's like, okay, I mean, who are you? Right. And so, understandably, they were extremely skeptical. But I think the worst part, other than the industry skepticism, were the gatekeepers. The gatekeepers who were mainly older white men. And by that, I mean the critics, the people who really almost hold the power of life and death over any artistic endeavor. These people felt I was a usurper, a dilettante, someone who wasn't serious about their precious art form, someone who approached it with disrespect because I wasn't, you know, I was doing something totally new and foreign to them. And it is those people who actually attacked me publicly every time I tried to do something, which I had to contend with. And I have to say, not to appear, you know, ungracious and gloating, but I have outstayed them.
- [40:12]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Good for you. Yes. I just want to say Charles sounds like he was such a wonderful man and your true partner in many, many things. And I'm sorry to hear of his passing, but I know you've said to.
- [40:27]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
Me that he's still with you, always, always criticizing me. He's my biggest critic in addition to being my greatest supporter.
- [40:35]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Okay, so Cerise, this is your sixth season with White Snake projects. What are you working on now and what are you excited about next?
- [40:46]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
We have so many things we're working on. So I truly believe in community outreach. That's part of our social activism. And I believe that the distinction that is so called a line between high art and sort of low art, with traditional rep or main stage productions being in the high art category and community art making definitely relegated to the low art. But I've come to believe that this distinction is false and that the reason why a lot of community programming doesn't have the same production values, let's say as a main stage production, is very simply lack of proper resources and lack of proper mentoring. So we do a lot of work where we actually get community writers and composers to write under our mentorship. We resource them properly. So for instance, in June, this upcoming June, we have an opera called to the People Like Us. And that is an opera about gentrification and that subject was chosen by high school students. We work with 826Boston, which is an after school program that services mostly black and brown high schoolers. And they wanted to write an opera with us. So we met with them every other week during semester and they picked the subject matter, they wrote the libretto, which is opera speak for script and under our guidance. And then we have a professional composer set to music and that's going to premiere in June. So we are first written by the community opera. And then next year we have a theme every year. So next year our theme is climate justice. So we have a lot of activations on climate issues. And our main stage show is called White Raven, Black Dove, which is set in a dystopian world after the sixth extinction. I work with students to create 3D environments and avatars and we work in the game engine Unreal real epic games. And so, you know, we get always get that young perspective on social issues that matter to everybody. So that is our 2025. And in 2026, of course is the 250th birthday of America. We know that a lot of companies will be celebrating that. And yes, we're celebrating that too, but with a difference. We're doing it from the indigenous perspective. So we're foregrounding the native perspective on this, including the origin story of America, which emphasizes the genocidal founding of this country. Now, that doesn't make us love the country less, but it is facing up to the truth about how America became the America that we know today. That there were winners and there were losers. And the story is always told from the perspective of the winners. But we want to make sure that everybody knows the whole story. So 2026 will be a year of activities grounded in the indigenous perspective. And we have a whole bunch of indigenous partners that are working with us on creating the programming.
- [44:23]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Wow. It sounds very powerful. And I need to find a way to get over to Boston. I live on the west coast, but I do come over to the east coast probably once a quarter.
- [44:32]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
We should time it so that you can come to a show and become as my.
- [44:36]
Alisa Sue Lynch
I would love that. I would love that. Yes. So, Cerise, last question. What advice would you give to your younger self about navigating your career while staying true to yourself?
- [44:48]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
I know so much more about me now, of course, than I did when I ran away from home when I was 18 or 19. And I think one of the things I would say to myself is, don't be afraid. Because, of course, I think I've been afraid my whole life. I'm still, to be perfectly honest, I'm still afraid, you know, because the future is so uncertain. There are so many things in our world now. The other thing is don't be afraid. And if you are afraid, it's okay, because fear can always be overcome. Or if not overcome, you can always work with it looming over you. I'm living proof of that. You can do what you need to do. Despite that.
- [45:42]
Alisa Sue Lynch
You are definitely living proof of that. I mean, you have faced your fears, overcome them and more. That's wonderful advice. Thank you so much for sharing your insights and your leadership dance with us. It's really been an honor to have you on the podcast.
- [45:57]
Cerise Lim Jacobs
Thank you so much for having me. I'm very, very grateful to have had this conversation with you, like Follow and.
- [46:05]
Alisa Sue Lynch
Share the Leadership Dance, where we explore how to choreograph the career of your dreams and chat with visionary leaders who are breaking barriers in the arts and business worlds. Until next time, keep dancing.