Out Loud! director/choreographer William Byram on challenging the classical canon

William Byram

Originally from Mississippi, William Byram is a director and choreographer currently based in London, and he has worked as an assistant director and movement director for English Touring Opera, Opera Holland Park, The Grange Festival. William is interested in seeking to celebrate yet challenge the classical canon through telling stories of queer resilience. He has co-founded the company Out Loud!, dedicated to amplifying LGBTQ+ voices, and their debut production was Humperdinck's Hansel & Gretel at Cockpit Theatre in October.

When it comes to spreading ideas of rethinking the canon, William is a realist and admits that you have to pick your battles, but feels that when it comes to gender (and gender fluidity) in opera, audiences will often go with you. And he points to recent productions of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro where the portrayal of Cherubino played into the element of androgyny present by having a woman playing a man.

William trained at the Conservatory of Dance at SUNY Purchase in New York and Trinity Laban in London. He was the recipient of the US-UK Postgraduate Fulbright Award in Dance and a Junior Fellow at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama.

William founded Out Loud! with an Australian director, Bobbie Jean Henning. The two met as staff directors with English Touring Opera. Their idea for the new company is to start with operas that exist but which can tell queer stories and the majority of the team are LGBTQ+ and allies, though they are not counting. With each production there is an element of access and outreach to young queer people. In the longer term, they want to set up a commissioning cycle too, creating opera that deals with queer stories and themes, though the intention would be that this was relatively open ended to avoid simply telling the same story repeatedly.

William Byram's production of Humperdinck's Hansel & Gretel at Salon Opera, Dec 2025 [Photo: Julian Guidera]

The intention was to launch the company with a production of Gregory Spears's first opera, Paul's Case which was written in 2009 for the American Opera Projects. Funding issues meant that this was delayed, and the production will debut next year. In order to be able to launch the company when planned, the decided to produce Hansel & Gretel, basing the production on one William had already done for Salon Opera, with whom he was worked on several productions.

William admits that Hansel & Gretel was not ideal in terms of Out Loud! mission, but that a lot of themes in the production chimed in. Hansel was played as androgynous, and the same singer played Mother, Witch and Sandman but stayed as Mother throughout with the Witch presented as old school glam. In the original opera, both Mother and Witch are harder on Hansel than Gretel and William feels that they reinterpreted this as Mother and Witch resenting Hansel for their gender euphoria.

Another thread running through the opera is that the children are played by adult singers, and thus you can ask the question whether the characters are real children or this is an allegory. In the UK, productions of Hansel & Gretel by David Pountney (for ENO) and Richard Jones (for WNO) have been iconic, and William feels that you can take inspiration from an iconic production but need to go somewhere else with it, otherwise you are simply creating a pale imitation.

Gregory Spears: Paul's Case - American Opera Projects at Artisphere Theater, 2013 [ Photo: C. Stanley Pictures]

The American composer Gregory Spears is perhaps best known for his 2016 opera Fellow Travellers, based on Thomas Mallon's novel which inspired the TV series. His opera Paul's Case is based on Willa Cather's 1905 short story of the same name. The story was inspired by Cather's time as a teacher when a boy in her class who was 'different' took his own life. In the opera, Paul is something of a dandy and works in a bank. He steals money from the bank, goes to New York and stays at the Waldorf. He sees his robbery reported in the paper and rather than facing the repercussions he takes his own life. Thus far, the story covers the sort of 'sad gay' narrative would not necessarily appeal to the company.

But in the opera, after Paul's death, there is a quartet of secondary characters commenting on what they liked about him and what they could have done different. William describes this as a real operatic quartet. And it is followed by Paul himself reappearing with an extended aria which retails his hopes and dreams. It was this ending which made William decide to do the opera, as he finds it a poignant way of dealing with the 'sad gay' story. It is a tale which is often flippantly told, but in the opera William finds the ending super beautiful and it gives it heart.

In 2024, William was the movement director for my local opera company, St Paul's Opera's production of Strauss's Die Fledermaus in Clapham and he also directed the family matinee featuring the cover cast. He is returning to St Paul's Opera next year to direct Massenet's Cendrillon in July 2027. One of the reasons for choosing Cendrillon (Cinderella) is that it has so many female roles (they are performing the version with Prince Charming played by a mezzo-soprano).

Though from William's point of view, that the opera has dance in it too is attractive. He teaches dance in Clapham and St Paul's Opera plan to involve local dancers in the production. William loves Laurent Pelly's production of Cendrillon (created for Santa Fe in 2006, and seen at Covent Garden 2011), and looks forward to exploring the rather interesting space at St Paul's Church in Clapham for his own production, which promises to play into the whimsy and fairytale of the story.

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