The Magic Flute - What a blast!

I once performed in The Magic Flute with Southern Opera as Chorus/Slave. What a lovely experience that was! What made it so? I think it was a whole lot of things, but a lot to do with how everyone got on in this show. There seemed to permeate through the cast a positive, supportive and accepting vibe that brought good out of everyone. There seemed to be very little exclusivity and old style snobbiness and instead a kind of welcoming of everyone's contribution no matter how big or small to the collective effort. And that collective effort brought what seems to have been a good quality result, especially from the chorus in my view :-), but from principals and everyone concerned.

So what would I take from this into future productions?

• All ages can work together to wonderful effect. There was a variety of age groups represented in this cast and although the chorus was mostly 17 to 30, there was little or nothing in the way of age-oriented division. In fact the variety of perspectives, creativity, energy and experience was an important ingredient to its success.
• Mozart is possibly as refreshingly interesting now as ever, especially for the performer. Working with the Magic Flute material closely, you still find it interesting. Perhaps our historical perspective on it moderates our expectation to some degree and makes us generous to the humour, some of which is outdated. But overall, the material and music are fun and triggered many smiles and even laughs even on the final night
• Creativity effects many aspects of the production, some you don't think of. Even contracts and schedules for example. Not just writing the contracts, but working them through requires creativity aplenty and the worst thing we can do for working together happily on a production is to desperately cling to the letter of a day one agreement throughout, or expect someone else to. I think everyone in a truly happy cast has to have an attitude of selfless, creative good intent combined with an acceptance that change is unavoidable at all levels.
• Flattery no, positive expectation of the best in someone and in their intentions yes.Although I believe there are some aspects of life that need and serve to bring out the idiot in us, like voting and advertising, we are all smart, especially all in any opera cast I have been in. Meaningless flattery insults our intelligence, but it has a close cousin, high expectation, and that is essential to teamwork. Cynicism loves the fact that flattery and voiced encouragement often seem so similar.

Of course I learned many other things, but I like these ones.