At The Opera Tonight

I'm always in the right place at the right time.

Yesterday I was meeting with the director of my upcoming play, Kill You Dead (It's posted on here, read it, read it now!). He works at a school and sometimes school functions occur in his room. More to the point, I was told that the Arizona Opera would be showing up to perform, so I should make myself useful (As is the usual drill for me anyways when events occur in this room).

With that, me and my bumbling sidekick Frank began setting up the room for the show and assisting the opera singers with whatever they needed. We moved tables, retrieved chairs, and so on. We thought that this was going to be the extent of our assistance, which usually it is. However, it's five minutes to curtain and suddenly we're asked to go on stage to assist with one last thing, so we hop to it.

La Boheme, which is what the musical Rent is loosely based on, is the show being performed at the school. Being that Frank and myself were backstage for most of the performance I can't tell you how much of La Boheme influenced the other piece. I did though, catch a few things that were obviously taken from this and used in Rent. Either way, Act 2 is where Frank and I are needed, so we wait patiently in the wings.

There's singing, there's humor, there's drama and then much to the audience's surprise, there's Frank and myself on stage!

We were needed to pantomime a conversation during a cafe scene, and then interact with one of the singers who would be flirting with us. So we sat there, did our conversation, enjoyed the laughs from the audience that we received and then we were approached by the singer. She leaned on Frank, ran her fingers across my shoulders, and all of the sort of physical things a chick would do to flirt. We, on the other hand, weren't allowed to speak (Because there's no speaking, it's a damn opera!), so we had to use our amazing acting abilities to interact within this scene without disturbing the original piece.

With that, we made faces. Frank would blush, I would slyly giggle. She'd touch him and I'd get jealous. She'd touch me and he'd pout, and so on. This went on for a little bit and then she moved on to one of her cast mates. Usually, you'd see your non-vocal actors drop off right here. NOPE! We sat there and continued our job. She'd touch the other guy and we'd get angry. She would giggle at his touch and we'd glare intently. This went on for about five minutes and then the scene ended, our participation in the opera was over.

After the show many of the opera representatives, students and staff members at the school congratulated Frank and myself for a job well done. However, almost of these people even went so far as to say we stole the scene from the singers. Here's the funny thing, it was a revelation to only the opera singers and representatives that Frank and I were actors. When my director volunteered us for what he thought was moving scenery (He wasn't aware that they wanted us to act), it never occurred to him to tell the people from the opera that we are theatre geeks by trade. Needless to say, they were very impressed with our abilities and they all gave us high praise.

In short, I have now been in a musical. My aspirations for life are complete. Excuse me while I go and stick my head in an oven! Good day!