This afternoon we performed the "Isle of Dreams" at Our Lady of the Snows Shrine in Belleville, IL. It was an interesting event, because a ticket price was actually charged. (We were performing as a fund-raiser for a new church building for a local congregation.) The layout of the stage and room was interesting, with the stage coming to a point where the solo mic was and then coming back to form a triangle with the edge at the end of the line of chairs. With my chair being set behind the line of chairs and stage left, I was unable to see the cast, with the exception of the soloist at center mic and James, who was on the end nearest me. Ruth sat behind me to my left.

The first half of the perfomance was very rough. There were difficulties with the music volume in the house and monitors not being set right (even though we had gone through 3 sound checks prior to the performance). Add to this fact that soloists kept accidentally turning off the mic when they pulled it from the stand and you have a perfect recipe for chaos and jerky performances and transitions.

After the intermission (which was an overwhelming 35+ minutes long - not under our control), we came back out and performed what may have bee the best second half ever. Thankfully, everybody handled the mics correctly and seemed to get over whatever nervousness they had in the first act. Tony and I made our entrance on "Prince of Revelation" from the back of the auditorium, with him "beating" me all the way down the aisle. Our timing was a little off and I barely made it to center stage position in time to finish the Crucifixion scene, but I still feel that it went really well.

Overall, I didn't feel like this was anything near our best performance, but we pulled it out in the second half. The audience seemed to be genuinely thrilled with the performance and there were many people that came forward afterwords to express their gratitude for our performance. I was fairly pleased with my performance and vocals, but I also recognize there is always rom for improvement.

I'm glad God allows us these opportunities...