"Why did this happen to me-ee-ee?" ran one line in the new work, Fallen Angel. In this case, the answer was simple: because a group of about 20 teenagers at Queanbeyan High School decided to take part in the WotOpera program. In it, they wrote, composed, designed and built sets for an original 20-minute one-act opera in less than 24 hours, in a series of workshops spread over five weeks. Then they would go on to perform it in school and in public.
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Project leader Stephanie Acraman said the aim of WotOpera, a national arts program managed by Artology, was "to engage young people and challenge their creativity".
She and her team help the students develop their ideas but the key creative input comes from the young people.
"It's about putting them in a position that makes them stray outside their comfort zone."
While many of the participants have some experience of drama or music, others do not, and the experience of creating a work from scratch is new to many.
"It's about building confidence and building skills and finding out something about themselves."
They also discovered that opera did not have to be old-fashioned and foreign or whatever other preconceptions they brought to it.
Fallen Angel, set in World War II, tells the story of a nurse, Katarina (played by Jess Constable) whose patients all die and who is helped by an angel to find out what happened to them. Could it be the responsibility of Dalton (Jennifer Smyth) who is obsessed with her and jealous of her relationship with Hugo (Matthew Lago)?
Jennifer, 14, said she was in a band at school, 2B 2W, with some of her friends and their music teacher, Callum Gracie, had suggested they apply to take part in WotOpera.
She said, "We haven't performed in front of more than 20 people before...It was something we thought would be fun."
Matthew, 18, was the only boy at Queanbeyan High to take part in WotOpera but this didn't concern him. He said he wanted to pursue the performing arts as a career .
Acraman – who studied at the ANU School of Music and has worked with WotOpera for several years as well as pursuing her own singing career – said this was the first time the Sydney-based WotOpera program had come to the Canberra region.
The other participating schools were Braidwood High School, which is creating a story about brain-swapping that turned people into monkeys, Karabar High School, making use of their dancing and singing talent to enact a 1940s gangster tale, and Campbell High School, bringing to life a zombie love story. All four schools will perform their works at the Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre on August 17.
WotOpera is on at the Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre on Monday, August 17 at 7pm. Tickets $10/$5. Bookings: theq.net.au. More information: wotopera.org.au.
