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As we walked through the dark streets of Alpbach after the opera, people kept stopping Frank–“You are the oxygen atom!” Plus many enthusiastic remarks on his singing, which I’ll refrain from repeating because I don’t want his head to become too big! (Alas, Frank’s literally-big head is already too big for the largest size of Alpine hat sold here in Alpbach.)
The beautiful soprano Eve (Diane Shooman), meanwhile, was surrounded by interviewers from Austrian radio, which is a shame because her red dress and glamorous fishnet “lab coat” deserve a much wider audience. Best Marilyn-Monroe singing ever! Alas, my camera chose last night to develop mysterious problems with speed and focus, so that my own record of these events is as blurred as it might be by two bottles of Champagne…which I didn’t drink, enjoying instead all the tipsiness of success without any next-morning-hangover aftermath. Thomas Oliva, one of the main organizers for this whole event, also found time to organize lab coats, laser pointers, helium balloons, and many other extras for our show, including flowers for the soprano’s curtain call and–for Marc Abrahams and Frank Wilczek–authentic Alpine boots! So I was very glad that Thomas also got to join us onstage as one of our “scientist” with laser beams–as did Krishna Nathan of IBM, Kathryn List (Vice President of the European Forum Alpbach), and two other scientists of great dramatic ability whose names I hope to discover and blog here later, one of them the heart surgeon whose lab provided all lab coats except for Diane’s fishnet special. To anyone who googled here from “scientific wrangling”–oops, not quite. But as some consolation, from this scientist wrangler, here are the written-down guidelines for five unrehearsed people who got cast in our mini-opera ten minutes pre-curtain. And they were great! In case the Metropolitan Opera phones me about doing a re-staging there, I’d better go find out the names of those other two scientists!* |
* Our two other scientist-opera-stars were Heinrich Mächler, Professor at the University Clinic in Graz and Professor Wolf Rauch, Professor for Information Technology at Graz University, long-term rector of his University, now also member of the Styrian Parliament. Thanks once again to Thomas Oliva, for this information!
t-zero. After a speaker who talks about Liechtenstein, Marc will take audience questions. Then go with Betsy to join the opera singers behind their screen (diagram zero), and get a laser pointer from her if you don’t already have one.
t-one. After Eve goes onstage, she will beckon to us. We follow her up onto the stage and stand together, upstage and stage right (diagram one). Our role here is half scientist, half science machine. Therefore we stand very still and look very serious during the singing.
t-two. When Eve sings “..it involves laser beams…” that is our CUE. Machine-like, we raise our laser pointers and shine them on Atom’s shoes. This brings him to life and makes him move around, but try to keep the light shining on his shoes.
t-three. When Eve sings “if those lasers blink..” that is our CUE. We turn off our laser pointers and, machine-like, lower them again.
t-final! The curtain call! Now we cast off machine-like qualities–we can even clap for Atom, Eve, Paul (the pianist,) and Marc. While they are bowing we make a single line across the back of the stage to take our own bow, on behalf of all scientists everywhere. Then we bow again as part of the ensemble. We leave the stage after Atom and Eve–and don’t forget to give Betsy back her laser pointers!