ARTS BOOSTERS TAKE TO THE STAGE IN ‘BOHEME’

Some of the county’s high-profile arts supporters won’t be in the audience at tonight’s opening of “La Boheme” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. They’ll be on stage.

Even a Segerstrom--Toren, son of developer Henry--is taking two small roles in the Opera Pacific production. In Act III he plays a bum, no less, in the hall that bears his family’s name.

Also trading in their opening night tuxedoes and evening gowns for the garb of Paris’ Latin Quarter, circa 1830, are several founders and board members of Opera Pacific, including Donna Bunce, Margaret Price, Gayle Anderson and Michael Lawler.

They are among the nearly 70 supernumeraries--players in small, nonvocal roles--who will help fill out the Christmas Eve crowd scene in Act II of the Puccini opera. Some will also be among the 15 “supers” who appear briefly at the beginning of Act III, which takes place outside a tavern near the gates of the city.

While some performing arts halls in the United States employ their ballet corps in supernumerary roles for operas, many cast the roles with open calls, as Opera Pacific did for “La Boheme.”

The low-paying roles--$20 for all four performances of “La Boheme”--are taken by nonprofessionals. They range from society types and arts patrons to acting students and community theater performers who simply enjoy the chance to take part in an opera production, said assistant director Roman Terleckyj.

“I thought this was just a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us to do more than just attend the opera--to go backstage and be a part of it,” Lawler said in an interview--in full costume--before Thursday’s final dress rehearsal. “All the rest of our lives we’ll be able to look back on this experience and say, ‘Hey, we were part of a real live grand opera in the first year of the Performing Arts Center.’ ”

Lawler, an attorney who said he hasn’t been on stage since high school, plays a policeman in Act II. “I get to arrest a couple of hookers and then break up a fight and in general keep the peace--which isn’t too hard on Christmas Eve (in the opera).”

This will also be Anderson’s first time on stage since high school. “It will be an incredible experience to realize, when this is all finished and we come back for a performance and look down on that stage, that I was actually down there,” Anderson said. “The part (a middle-class married woman in Act II) is not that great, but it’s a wonderful feeling.”

Bunce, co-chairman with Anderson of Opera Pacific’s annual Opera Ball, plays a milkmaid in the second act. She is also a member of the chorus, playing a “flirt” who walks arm in arm with the artist Marcello (played by Timothy Noble) in the third act.

A singer with the Master Chorale of Orange County, she was encouraged by a fellow chorale member to try out for the opera’s chorus. “I never, honestly, had thought about it because I always thought that being a member of Opera Pacific I would be in the audience,” she said.

Price also had no thoughts at first of taking part in the production. An active Opera Pacific volunteer in addition to being a board member and founder, she went to the supernumerary casting call to help out. “Roman (Terleckyj) came up to me and said, ‘Are you going to be in it?’ I hadn’t thought about it even, but I said, ‘Sure.’

“Theater and opera and stage and singing have been part of my life since I was 5 years old, maybe earlier, so it’s not exactly a new experience for me, but it’s one I thought I wouldn’t be having any more of.”

Terleckyj, director Gian Carlo Menotti’s assistant in the United States since 1979, first worked on a production of “La Boheme” with Menotti in 1980. Since then, he estimated in an interview this week, he has worked on about 20 productions of the popular opera and has cast the supernumeraries for all of them.

“Since we’ve done the production so many times, the characters are obvious to me. I just go into a situation like here, where they have a big super call . . . and try to cast each character as we best see fit,” he said.

Supernumerary casting calls always draw a varied group, Terleckyj said: “People who are in acting classes, people who are in community theater, people who used to be opera singers, people who are social people within the guilds and the support systems for the various functions of the opera company, people who want to get involved--and ‘Boheme’ is a good place to do it because there are a great many people in that scene.

“It’s an opportunity for the community to become involved in a professional production and to understand the workings of it, and it’s also an opportunity for them to be on stage with some very famous artists. They’re also a very important part of it because they create the entire atmosphere of the second act.”

Terleckyj said local arts boosters, even board members of the group sponsoring the production, receive no preferential treatment in casting. “Actually, I like to not know that when I choose the supers because what’s important is what the audience sees.”

This approach can lead to some inadvertently ironic casting choices, as in Segerstrom’s roles as a poor coal seller in Act II and an indigent in Act III. Segerstrom is philosophical about the situation: “If the part of the bum is open, I’ll do the part of the bum. I love it, and I’ll do it with great spirit. It’s great fun.”

He will be the first Segerstrom to perform at the Center, and he said the rest of the clan is looking forward to seeing him on stage. “My family farmed here first, we helped build the Center, and now I’m part of the Center,” he said. “I think that’s a special part of the South Coast Metro area and the Center, that people can get involved.”