Youth Opera Lab

Try your hand at the moldmaking process used to create props for Salome. Participate in a workshop with properties builder Wulf Higgins, followed by a Q&A with production manager Lee Milliken. Find out what decisions, processes, and people are involved in creating what you’ll see on stage in Strauss’s tantalizing opera.

Workshop and Rehearsal: Saturday, April 13, 5:30 – 9 p.m. – Salome by Richard Strauss
Dress Rehearsal: Thursday, April 18, 7:30 p.m.
Participants are required to attend the Youth Opera Lab in order to be eligible for dress rehearsal tickets. 
Click here to apply online.  

Confirmed Guests: Q&A with production manager Lee Milliken and a workshop led by properties builder Wulf Higgins.

Schedule - April 13:
5:30 - 5:45 p.m. Arrival and introductions
5:45 - 6:30 p.m. Workshop with Wulf Higgins
6:40 - 7:20 p.m. Q&A with Lee Milliken
7:30 - 9 p.m. Observe Salome rehearsal
9 - 9:15 p.m. Conclusion of workshop with Wulf Higgins

About the Guests:

Lee Milliken has worked with the Canadian Opera Company since 1989 and has held various positions in the production and music departments. She has been the COC’s production manager since 1995. As the co-director of the production department her current responsibilities include the creation and management of production department budgets and contract negotiation for designers and co-productions as well as participating in the COC’s long-term artistic planning. A former trombonist, she studied music at the University of Toronto and at the University of Michigan. 

Wulf Higgins has been in the props department at the COC since 1986, as well as working and teaching in prop shops from BC to Newfoundland. Although himself a dropout from Ryerson University, he nevertheless returned there to teach prop design and construction for ten years. He considers himself lucky to have spent most of his adult life doing what is indisputably the best job in theatre, if not the whole world.