I was an extra in George Romero's 1978 film Dawn of the Dead. At 1:30am on the day of shooting, I piled a few of my friends into my rattletrap 1964 Dodge Polara (the one with the push-button transmission) and drove out to the Monroeville Mall, where we were slathered with gray makeup and told to "act like a bunch of zombies". We were shown the winding route that the tractor-trailer would follow through the nearly empty parking lot as it careened towards the mall. We were then given the direction that we were all supposed, with lurching stride and arms outthrust, to look like perambulating dead people. Since shooting started at 8am and we hadn't slept at all since the 2am cattle-call, the "look like a zombie" part was easy. Improvising a drunkards walk was not hard for some, since alchohol had also figured prominantly in their late-night nutrition. But what came as somewhat of a shock to me, at least, was looking up from my caffeine-free torpor to see that the tractor-trailer was not on its assigned course, but rather was about to magically transform me from a play-acting dead person into the real thing. Not wishing to permanently fill the role of corpse, I acted with un-zombie-like aplomb and put on a burst of very scared human speed. In acting terms, I "improvised".

Opera has no "extras", they have supernumeraries (or "supers" for short). There are likewise no "understudies"—that term, I was told, is left for the "legitimate theatre". Opera therefore has "covers". And instead of "walk-ons", "bit parts", and other (mildly perjortative) terms, opera has a chorus—a non-starring, but nevertheless essential vocal part. For the Commedia dell'arte scene in Pagliacci, the choristers fill the role of the villagers come to see the production put on by Canio, Nedda, Tonio, and Beppo. Not counting the dozen or so children, there are about 40 choristers, and last night was the chorister staging.

It will probably come as no surprise that the choristers are a lot better prepared than the extras I worked with in Dawn of the Dead. Here, they all know their parts, so when the accompianist began playing, I was treated to 40 voices singing full-throatedly on key and in time. But that was expected, given what I saw in how the principal singers had prepared. What was really interesting was the staging.

First, the stage director places every person in their final position on stage. There is some small amount of shuffling based on voice part (so that there is not, for example, a preponderance of sopranos in one place), and then the director gives every singer their "motivation". You two are sisters, you are upset that these people have sat in front of you, you folks are friends with this group, etc. Then each singer is given a starting location offstage and a "trajectory" (and in some cases, instructions to carry their seats or benches from offstage). Essentially, the director works the chorus through their roles in reverse. A quick run-through is done to see how it looks, some small adjustments are made, and then intermediate actions are dictated. You three run out to get the best seats. You two stop along the way to chat with your friends. You argue with the commedia actors to get the show started, and you four jump in for support...

And all of this is done while singing their part, and listening for cues. And some of those cues are of course given by the in-the-wings stage-managers, who coordinate entrances with balletic precision. I learned that the stage-managers also have to be able to read music, since they take their cues directly from the score. Because this was only a staging rehearsal, the principal singers were not in attendance. So at times Maestro Buckley would fill in for them, singing their parts quite creditably! This in additition to conducting the music and giving cues.

Of course, not every action of the chorus is dictated by the director—there is still some room for improvisation, but by and large the entire chorus is scripted from entrance to exit. The net result is that any scene with the choristers quite frankly looks a lot more "alive" than Dawn of the Dead. I suppose that since Pagliacci concludes with only three corpses (while George Romero's film started with scores of them) this is only logical, but it is really quite remarkable to see the care with which the start of this scene is tended. When I have seen the chorus in action in other operas (like the party scene in La Traviata, the church in Tosca, or the village in Rigoletto), I marvelled at how vivid, vital and realistic the scene looked. Now I know why!