Opera to Go! Tour to Midland

Wednesday, Feb. 18- Day 3

Our second morning in Midland got off to a rocky start. We woke up to find our passenger van with a new accessory – a parking boot. We had children to edu-tain (educate + entertain), so all the singers loaded into the back of the cargo van among the sets and costumes and took off for our first of three performances.

Midland was kind to us however and we got the boot removed with no charge. Our first elementary school of the day presented one of the smallest stages yet. Performing with Opera to Go! definitely teaches us to be malleable to our surroundings.

Back to the Carver Center for our second show and during load in an honest to goodness tumbleweed rolled through the playground. The building itself (much like a good portion of Midland) seems frozen in time with old-fashioned lockers and a muted color pallet of yellows and dark jewel tone tiles. These huge levers, reminiscent of a Frankenstein flick, controlled the lights for the theater. This time around we figured out just how to use them to our advantage. Over the course of the show our stage manager Derek deftly coordinated a blue lit opening (we are under the sea after all) fading into red for the sea witch’s entrance. We had a slightly older crowd of 4th-6th graders and some of the lovely ladies from the party last night.


We had a brief period between shows to catch a bite so we looked for some hot eats and cool treats. Lured by the Texas stop sign for some not-so-healthy grub at Dairy Queen, we couldn’t escape without tasty Blizzards. Since the time between shows was so short a bunch of us decided not to completely change out of our costumes, so I had the distinct pleasure of wearing the top half for the whole restaurant to see… glittery sash and all. My jeans covered my green thorned tights, but still nobody seemed to care. Just another day at the DQ, I guess. Our third school brought us a younger audience who were very energetic and eager to participate in the short song we teach them at the beginning of the show. At one particularly hilarious moment when the sea witch is offering the mermaid the magic potion to transform her into a human, a young boy shouted out ‘I can not watch!’ Like Michael said, sometimes it’s a challenge to keep it together on stage and keep ourselves from laughing! At the end the kids gave us an unusual but endearing token of their appreciation. Their mascot is the tigers so we got ‘the tiger paw,’ which was two leg pats, two claps and a big ‘grrrrrr!’ It was awesome.

The evening brought some alone time which was mostly filled with some much needed napping. The cast descended on a quaint local trattoria called Luigi’s for some good Italian food. We had hoped to indulge in some bowling but all the lanes were full and we couldn’t agree on a movie choice at the local drive-in. Instead we piled into a hotel room for some rowdy games of Scatergories before drifting off to bed – resting up for our last day in Midland.

-Dennis Arrowsmith, Ocean King in Opera to Go!'s production of Little Mermaid