Last Show
Mural section at the Downtown School in Des Moines, IA
EVANSTON, IL - Yesterday was the last day of the tour. Our final stop on what amounted to a greater-than 7,000-mile journey was the Downtown School in Des Moines. It was a good place for us to have our last hurrah.
The school, as its name indicates, is in the heart
of downtown Des Moines. It's a public school, but it was unlike any other that
we encountered during our travels. For one thing, the school had wall-to-wall
carpeting. That's something impractical to most of the schools we visited, which
were located primarily in agricultural communities. The ethnic makeup of the
school was also different from most of the schools we had visited. Perhaps owing
to the fact that the Downtown School is in an urban surrounding, its student
body was a veritable rainbow of ethnicities. It was a far cry from the mostly
homogeneous groups of kids we met in more rural
locales.
The Downtown School was similar to the other schools we visited in Iowa in its clear devotion to the mission of educating its children. Time and time again throughout the last three months, I have been impressed and inspired by the amount of energy and resources that Iowans invest in their schools. The Downtown School, I suspect, is a model of the state's commitment to public education. In our respective workshops, all of us had the pleasure of working with groups of kids who displayed great interest in the material, active imaginations, and a rare degree of inquisitiveness. On top of all that, they were impeccably behaved.
Nicole presents her final workshop
Our last performance of Pigs took place across the street from the school at the Des Moines Convention Center. Members of the opera company's office, including our Executive Director, Jeri, made the trip up to Des Moines to see us put the finishing touches on the tour. She brought with her a major donor to our program, without whose assistance this project may not have been possible. With our employers nestled amongst the city's children and their teachers, we donned our pig and wolf costumes for the final time.
Opera Iowa 2005 takes its final bow of the season
The show went just fine. The kids at the Downtown School laughed in the same places that all of our other audiences laughed, and their barrage of questions afterwards was similar to the string of inquiries we had fielded every day since the beginning of the tour. Jeri took an opportunity to thank us publicly for our hard work, and the school's principal also extended her gratitude to the company and to the generosity of parents in the school community who had made our visit possible. The major donor to the opera company was also greeted warmly with a thank-you from the children and from the cast. On the final day of performance, it was like the credits rolling at the end of a movie.
Our show was the last in a series of 69 performances of Pigs. When combined with our performances of Così, we probably totaled 85-90 shows over ten weeks. It was a challenging - and often grueling - process, but we made it through in one piece. For the most part, we were able to survive without major altercation within the group. There were disagreements and miscommunications along the way, but I suppose that's to be expected when you have a group of people spending an abnormally excessive amount of time together.
After the show was over, the process of taking down the set played out one last time. We singers and Eric stood around in the empty room at the convention center, engaging in our usual banter with one another. Eventually, when Pitt was just about done putting the set away with his volunteer crew, the rest of us picked up our belongings and walked to the parking garage. Brian and I got into our own cars, which we had driven up from Indianola; the rest of the crew got into the van. By the time we all made it out of the garage in our respective vehicles, the tour had already begun its gradual move from the realm of the present into the haze of memory.
OPERA IOWA VIDEO
If you haven't seen the Opera Iowa 2005 video, you can see it online by clicking here.
The Downtown School was similar to the other schools we visited in Iowa in its clear devotion to the mission of educating its children. Time and time again throughout the last three months, I have been impressed and inspired by the amount of energy and resources that Iowans invest in their schools. The Downtown School, I suspect, is a model of the state's commitment to public education. In our respective workshops, all of us had the pleasure of working with groups of kids who displayed great interest in the material, active imaginations, and a rare degree of inquisitiveness. On top of all that, they were impeccably behaved.
Nicole presents her final workshop
Our last performance of Pigs took place across the street from the school at the Des Moines Convention Center. Members of the opera company's office, including our Executive Director, Jeri, made the trip up to Des Moines to see us put the finishing touches on the tour. She brought with her a major donor to our program, without whose assistance this project may not have been possible. With our employers nestled amongst the city's children and their teachers, we donned our pig and wolf costumes for the final time.
Opera Iowa 2005 takes its final bow of the season
The show went just fine. The kids at the Downtown School laughed in the same places that all of our other audiences laughed, and their barrage of questions afterwards was similar to the string of inquiries we had fielded every day since the beginning of the tour. Jeri took an opportunity to thank us publicly for our hard work, and the school's principal also extended her gratitude to the company and to the generosity of parents in the school community who had made our visit possible. The major donor to the opera company was also greeted warmly with a thank-you from the children and from the cast. On the final day of performance, it was like the credits rolling at the end of a movie.
Our show was the last in a series of 69 performances of Pigs. When combined with our performances of Così, we probably totaled 85-90 shows over ten weeks. It was a challenging - and often grueling - process, but we made it through in one piece. For the most part, we were able to survive without major altercation within the group. There were disagreements and miscommunications along the way, but I suppose that's to be expected when you have a group of people spending an abnormally excessive amount of time together.
After the show was over, the process of taking down the set played out one last time. We singers and Eric stood around in the empty room at the convention center, engaging in our usual banter with one another. Eventually, when Pitt was just about done putting the set away with his volunteer crew, the rest of us picked up our belongings and walked to the parking garage. Brian and I got into our own cars, which we had driven up from Indianola; the rest of the crew got into the van. By the time we all made it out of the garage in our respective vehicles, the tour had already begun its gradual move from the realm of the present into the haze of memory.
OPERA IOWA VIDEO
If you haven't seen the Opera Iowa 2005 video, you can see it online by clicking here.
Posted: Sat - April 16, 2005 at 11:55 AM
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Published On: Apr 16, 2005 11:59 AM
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Published On: Apr 16, 2005 11:59 AM