The Damnation Of Faust - continued

Various lucky choristers get to periodically leave their perches in the boxes or pit to partake in the stage action. After the initial choruses, a number of the men slip discretely off stage and prepare for the drunken beer-hall scene by removing their tuxedo jackets and ties to achieve the desired disheveled look. On cue we burst onto the set through tiny doorways, beer mugs in hand, and collapse onto long bar tables that magically rise out of the floor just in time to prop us up. The required bleary-eyed look is achieved by straining to see the conductor’s beat in the tiny television monitor at the back of the house right under the bright spotlight. Midway through the merriment a few of us depart the stage for the quick-change into clerical garb for the sacrilegious spectacle to come. Frantic dressers stand by with costumes and accoutrements, readying us for our re-entrance into the beer hall in miraculously little time.

Standing there just offstage at the top of the platform, now dressed as a humble bride of Christ, waiting for my grand re-entrance cue to walk the plank back onto the set in front of the audience, I find a moment to pause and reflect about the meaning of life. It’s not the cold stares of the stagehands. It’s not the lewd prosthetic strap-on breasts-and-butt concealed beneath my tear-away nun’s habit. It’s not the knowledge that in a moment with eyes raised heavenward I’ll prayerfully chassè en pointe across a narrow, raised fashion runway, only to be mauled by a faithless mob of drunken lechers for the titillation of a few thousand operagoers. No. It’s the thought of what Sister Alice Regina would think of her promising little first grader if she could see him now: just another middle-aged male stripper-nun. From Saint Agnes Boy’s Choir to Sister Seductra in just fifty years. What happened?!?

But in this business there’s scant time for spiritual contemplation. After the inebriate brutes have ripped my costume to shreds and had their vile way with me, the scene mercifully ends and I’m dashing off again to my seat in the box, re-sheveling from total wreck to full tux on the way up the staircase.

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