We became spear carriers in a great televised opera. We were props in a show. I always felt we should have joined Actors Equity.

It wasn't that we improvised it. We were going to shoot it, but I had the props in my hand, and I wanted to understand the props before we shot, so I asked Paul 'Is this the hook?' and 'Where do you put the worm?' that's when the director just said 'Shoot these guys!' I didn't even know the camera was on, but it felt good!

Basically the first half-hour of the opera is an extended prologue, which is all material from the first two weeks of July 1945, ... Germany has just capitulated. Truman is meeting Stalin at Potsdam, which is where all this pressure comes from for the test to work. Oppenheimer has been in these meetings in Washington to select the target, and it's full steam ahead to Japan.

Now audiences will be able to hear opera the way it is supposed to sound.

Opera? Just what the world needs: more fat women screaming.

It also wouldn't have been what it became without them finding someone like me to do that.