What-e-ver is a single-scene mini-opera depicting an ordinary argument between a mother and her teenage daughter. Beneath a seemingly trivial dispute over a household chore lies a larger tension between invisible labor, economic pressure, and the emotional distance between generations.

The work reflects on the lives of working-class and immigrant families in the United States, particularly single mothers whose labor often extends beyond what is visible or acknowledged. The mother’s exhaustion and frustration collide with the daughter’s feeling of being misunderstood, revealing how two people within the same family can experience the same moment from entirely different perspectives.

For the performance and film, I collaborated with Mexican actress and soprano Mariana Flores Bucio. Her naturally accented English brings her own cultural and immigrant experience into the work without being imposed upon the character. Rather than treating her accent as something to be corrected, I embraced it as part of her voice—an unassuming presence of cultural difference within an otherwise familiar domestic scene.

Through this everyday mother-daughter encounter, What-e-ver considers how class, labor, migration, language, and identity quietly shape the most intimate spaces of our lives.