Lend Me A Tenor

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Produced By: The Nextdoor Theater Company

Directed By: Nancy Curran Willis

Scenic Design By: Brian Milauskis

Performed at: The Nextdoor Theater Center for the Arts

 

Lend Me a Tenor is a the comedic story of Max, gopher extrodinair for the Chicago Opera Company, who finds himself in quite the pickle the night of a huge performance.  Italian opera singer Tito Mirelli is to sing in their companies production of Othello when he gets in a fight with his wife and accidently overdoses on sleeping pills and alcohol.  Assuming Tito is dead Max is ordered to impersonate him in the performance that evening.  When it turns out Tito is not dead after all a farsical mess of slamming doors and hillarity ensues.  The action of the play takes place over the course of a late afternoon into night, as such I employed subtle shifting in tone and quality of light to suggest the passage of time.  We also wanted to create the sense that, when Tito is teaching Max to sing with confodance, the whole world melts away and all he hears is the orchestra.  At the same time we never wanted the audience to forget that important action was going on even where main action was not.  As such I used tight control of certian locations to draw attention to important moments happening away from the main action of the show.