Volunteer
Volunteer Opportunities with West Bay Opera
Opera is the most complex and multi-layered of the performing arts. Every time a character steps onstage, a small army is mobilized around the theater to ensure that magic is delivered to the live audience in real time and without glitches. Stage hands, sound technicians, video projection experts, supertitle operators, light board and follow spot operators, dressers and make-up artists, to name just a partial list, spring into motion like a well-oiled machine to jointly deliver a product that presents itself as a completely integrated unit, and impresses the senses in a way that no other performing art form can. Opera is definitely about teamwork, though not only about that.
Community involvement is one of the most important and long-standing traditions at our company. Well over 100 volunteers are actively engaged in diverse aspects of each production, including set construction, costume building, make-up, properties, sound system set-up, orchestra pit set up, stage set crew and more. The all-volunteer West Bay Opera Chorus is composed of talented Bay Area singers who enjoy the opportunity to participate in fully-staged opera productions.
Volunteers also play an important role in fundraising events. You could help prepare or serve food at a benefit recital and reception in a private home, or help welcome out-of-town principal singers or other artists by providing transportation to or from the airport to our rehearsal hall or to private housing in and around Palo Alto. You could come into our offices and help with mass mailings, or volunteer to take pictures at our fundraising events, opening night donor receptions or preview performances.
You could also assist at the box office on busy performance nights or help distribute flyers at key spots around Palo Alto and other Peninsula communities. Or you could be helping with a social media campaign or an audience survey, or set up the coffee stand for intermissions, or the refreshments station for our preview performances, or help us with some IT task we don't have the budget to actually staff or pay a consultant to do. You get the idea.
The important thing is that you get involved. We don't set a minimum of hours that you need to put in. You decide your level of involvement. But we do expect our volunteers to come through once they have committed to doing something specific for us.
No matter what the assignment, you will work alongside top-notch professionals and experienced volunteers, learn a lot in the process, and become part of the West Bay Opera family. Whatever you helped build, prepare or set up, you'll be thrilled to see it onstage when the curtain finally goes up!
If you are interested in general volunteering opportunities, including office-based, shop apprentice and backstage crew opportunities, please contact Fernanda Carvalho, West Bay Opera Producer at Fer@WBOpera.org
If you are interested in auditioning for the chorus, please visit the chorus auditions page.
If you'd like to consider front-of-house opportunities at the theater (such as ushering or staffing concession sales on performance days), please contact our Front of House Volunteer Manager, Ron Susek.
Our productions are made possible, in part, by the generous support of our key partners:
