Dress Rehearsals ... Austin Lyric Opera welcomes students to an evening rehearsal before each opera production. Trained docents visit the classroom prior to the performance to prepare students for the opera experience. These evenings are most appropriate for fifth grade through high school students.

       Please join us on Tuesday, January 9, 2001 for Cold Sassy Tree in Bass Concert Hall; and Tuesday, May 15 for Carmen at the City Coliseum. Our Dress Rehearsal for Die Walküre will be held on Tuesday, March 6, 2001 and is open to high school students only.

There is also...

       Opera Preview ... Students are invited to a daytime performance of selections from Bizet's Carmen in the City Coliseum. This great classic features professional singers and a live orchestra. The performance is at 11:30 a.m. on May 17, 2001.

       The Austin Lyric Opera people were very nice to my EASY Theatre troupe. For the presentation prior to the dress rehearsal, two docents came to the kids' normal Play Analysis class at the library. The showed portions of a video and answer questions. Note: They will also schedule the presentations at their building on Barton Springs.

        They didn't have any problem with the fact that there were almost as many adults as children in our group when we went to see the dress rehearsal of Madame Butterfly. They also wouldn't hesitate to work with individual homeschooling families.

         What Leslie, who organized this for our group, did was estimate the number of tickets needed; then she collected the $3 per ticket as she passed the tickets out prior to the performance. This kept us from having to go to the dress rehearsal as a group.

         The fact that this was a dress rehearsal with periodic stops and starts was interesting for our theatre group and the performances were good, but it wasn't at the same performance level as an actual show performance. Still our group plans to see the rest of the dress rehearsals. I thought I'd pass along the information for those of you who would also like to schedule your groups.

       Note: I didn't take Rachel, my 4-year-old, to Madame Butterfly for two reasons, content and because they said it was most appropriate for those fifth grade and up. Cold Sassy Tree is a new opera and I don't know if it is appropriate for her, so I'll probably ere on the side of caution and not take her, even though she is a very good audience.

Engela Edwards
EASY Theatre