Growing up I had always been so fortunate to live in, what I considered to be, a very beautiful place. Unfortunately, this sort of circumstance can lead us to take nature’s beauty for granted. I think that Portland may be one of those places where people are surrounded by so much exquisite nature that they may not realize all the beauty the State has to offer. So to those people, may I encourage you to take the trip that POGO took last week to Bend and Prairie City to soak up some of the most beautiful landscapes I have ever seen. We took off last Sunday morning on a route that took us around the base of Mt Hood (US-26) and upon our return from Prairie City we made our way though the expansive landscapes of the US-395 (up to I-84) back north. WOW. While I could go on and on about the beauty of the drive alone, we had a job to do.
We spent our first few days in Bend on location at McMenamins Old St. Francis School, performing by day and taking dips in the semi-enclosed, and beautifully tiled, soaking pool by night! (and sometimes just taking a dip any chance we could get!) We all lived as roomies and neighbours as we shared 2 homes located on McMenamins property with a conveniently located quaint Irish pub literally in our backyard! (by the way, the McMenamins shows have been a blast and there is only one left! If you haven’t seen it yet, please join us at the Olympic Club this Friday!)
We visited Pine Ridge Elementary and Amity Creek School, both with the kids and grownups alike as delighted as ever. We are so lucky to do such a self-serving job.

It never ceases to amaze me how each audience reacts differently to our opera.  We have presented The Elixir of Love to kindergartners, children, teenagers, and adults of all ages, including an audience at a senior living community.

Sometimes the reactions are predictable: adult audiences tend to react to the things we say, while young children react to the things we do.  Other times, a particularly resonant or reverberant acoustic causes the words to be less distinguishable.  And in a few cases the lighting in the venue is so low I wondered whether we could even be seen at all.  Then there is the exciting opportunity to perform in the beautiful theater at Eastern Oregon University, complete with stage lights and a hyper responsive audience. But even with without all these variables, it seems that watching an opera can mean wildly different things to our audiences.

I feel extremely fortunate to be an ambassador not only for opera, but for all the performing arts.  So often it seems that performing arts organizations struggle to encourage people to attend.  There's some sort of barrier between people's lives and a seat in an auditorium.  We create new ways to get people to buy tickets and market our productions.  But we often forget the effectiveness of going to our audience instead of asking them to come to us. 

Week one of touring is off to a …start…
We have already completed 7 shows (8 by tomorrow), had 4 successful class room chats from us first-timers, 3 fake air plane crashes, 3 wrong turns, 2 artfully executed 187 point turns in a Penske, and an airplane in a pear tree? Not to mention a record setting less-than-25 minute set up!
We have been delighted by the ooh’s and aah’s of children from Scio to The Dalles with Belcore’s plane crash into a tree accompanied by the squeals of delight over Dr. Dulcamara’s bubble blowing cart.

Well, the countdown continues!  Today I went to the warehouse to check on what I might need to bring with us and got a wonderful preview of our set.  The folks at the warehouse were excited to show me all of the bells and whistles, and I have to say, it may be our cutest set ever!  Not only is it adorable, but it is beautiful and painterly, based heavily on the artistic style of Thomas Hart Benton.  

More important to me while wearing my tour manager hat, is the amazing and ingenious ease with which it has been designed and executed.  No tools are needed in the set up or strike.  Our shop has truly outdone themselves.  Kudos to Jim Sisemore, Jonah Stagg and Linda McGinnis for a fantastic set and an enthusiastic and informative introduction to it—I cannot wait to see the cast’s faces when they see the world that has been built for them!