I am so happy you guys loved my Eridian Opera post! Ya’ll have had such amazing ideas to add onto it and I just wanna
Thank you @zanoscar and @gabblerachet bringing up the ideas of Eridian puppeteers wearing specialized noise canceling robes to hide themselves like kabuki theater stage hands.
Historically in Japan, these stagehand roles are puppeteers or the special effects artist of their time. Ignored by the audience and the players. They are only acknowledged if one suddenly breaks their ‘character’ and attacks a player, revealing their face and themselves as a cleverly hidden assassin and joining the cast properly. This is where the Ninjas of modern media come from.
Now, for the Eridan opera, we could play that nearly one to one. But! What if we invert the assassin element and then combined that concept with another ancient theater tradition: the Greek chorus?
Here’s how I envision the first act of the Opera:
The big opening number serves two purposes, to provide exposition of how big of a threat the Star Eaters are, and to give every single one of the 23 Eridians on Blip A their moment to shine in the grand opening.
Rocky is seen is the opening too, of course, and he's portrayed with the personality he was known to have had then. Still blunt and direct, but aloof and socially shy. Adrians introduction gets a more impactful moment than Rocky does, but he also harmonizes with and uplifts them as the loving mate that he is. This also shows his best skills as an engineer thematically, building up and supporting others.
The launch of Blip A is an absolute banger of a number. The big epic ensemble of the crew as they leave Erid and set off to Tau Ceti.
From here the focus follows Rocky properly, as he works diligently in his quiet isolated job monitoring and operating the engines. He’s called up to attended meetings or do some repairs on occasion, but is a largely solitary stone as well as a workaholic.
And then the crew mates start to get sick.
Those who are still healthy desperately try to save the others, but they have no idea what is happening. As their conditions worsens, each crewmate gets a tragic reprise of their introduction song. There's even a romance subplot between two crewmates who found each other because of this mission and die together, holding each others claws as mates.
So! In Eridian theater, when a character goes to sleep they could be shrouded in the heavy silencing cloth so to imitated the paralyzed state. The actor will stay in the scene as long as the character is present/asleep/alive. But, if the character dies in their sleep, then the actor would rise up and leave the center stage, joining the Greek chorus for the rest of the play, literally haunting the narrative. They can also fill the role of the stagehands too, there to provide special effects and be puppeteers to continue supporting the narrative beneath their heavy shrouds.
At the end of the first act Rocky is the only one that remains in the center stage.
Rocky is shown to spend allot of time watching the corpses of his crew (now props). Waiting for them to awaken. Hoping one, any one of them, might revive from their paralyzed coma.
The unwritten theater rule that any dead player who joins the chorus is truly dead. Their song has joined the great symphony of the afterlife and only the echos of them remain to be heard
Now, what follows is Rocky's decent into grief and madness. The survivors guilt, the belief that he failed to save them in some way.
He is just one engineer. Not a captain or an officer or a biologist, or even a medical personnel. He is there to build the tools they would need, to make the theories a reality. But if he has no direction, if he doesn't know what they need to continue the mission, what can he do?
The answer is Wait, in the vaccum of space, surrounded by the echos of the dead.
