As a freshman in college I’m sure plenty of students have felt a little lost and intimidated at times. But at a time when we may feel most insecure in college, students in a freshman seminar class led by music professors Peter Nowlen and Deborah Pittman will be composing and performing their very own opera based on Sacramento State’s One Book of the year.

“A Mini Opera of The Devil’s Highway” will premiere at 5:30 p.m. Friday in Capistrano Hall, Room 151.

The mini opera follows the story of 26 illegal immigrants who crossed the Arizona desert in 2001 while on their journey from Mexico to the United States. Only 12 survived crossing the scorching desert.

Nowlen and Pittman are co-directing the performance. The entire performance is being composed and performed by students in Nowlen and Pittman’s freshman seminar class, which is designed to introduce students to the campus and teach them about how to be successful in college, Nowlen said.

In addition to performing scenes from the book, students will also play live music, which they composed and wrote lyrics for themselves. Pittman said students will play piano, guitar, trumpet, violin and cello. Some musicians such as violinist, lyricist and singer Simone Thompson, freshman music major, will also have an acting role.

Students focus a lot on Mendez in the mini opera, the paid “coyote” or gangster who led many of the people in his group to their deaths. Pittman said students did not want to portray him as a criminal, but instead as a victim who was trying to make money to support his family.

The opera is organized differently than the book. The first scene of the play, the prologue, is actually taken from a scene at the end of the book after Mendez has been captured and is being questioned by Mexican consul Rita Vargas in the hospital. The rest of the opera is told through flashbacks.

Following the prologue, the first scene will feature two Border Patrol agents driving in the desert with several illegal immigrants in the back seat. Chairs will symbolize the car while projections of a windshield are displayed in the background. Officers shoot a bunny next to a cactus in the scene; to symbolize the car moving toward the bunny, a student dressed as a cactus will walk toward the chairs.

“We were trying to figure out how to find a way to inject some humor into the piece,” Pittman said. “The scene with the agents is supposed to be kind of lighthearted and funny just to prepare us for the horrors that are coming later.”

Three more scenes will depict how Mendez joined the criminal organization that smuggled illegal immigrants, walkers dying and suffering from the desert heat and Mendez abandoning his group of walkers. The epilogue will bring the story back to the hospital as Vargas reads the names of the dead walkers.

To create the setting of the opera, images will be projected side by side on a blank wall behind the performers. Hospital and desert pictures will create much of the set, but there will also be a few props such as an IV bag for the hospital scenes.

Students will be providing much of the clothing used for the costumes, which will include mainly jeans and T-shirts. Border Patrol agents will use caps displaying their organization.

For the creative process, students were divided into four groups that each focused on a different area of the opera.

One group worked on the prologue, another focused on telling the story of the illegal immigrants or “walkers” and the remaining two groups focused on the point of view of the gangsters and Border Patrol.

Once students decided what areas of the book to focus on in the opera, Pittman said she helped them bring the story to life for the audience. She made sure the students gave enough background information on the characters because not everyone in the audience will have read the book.

Nowlen’s most memorable moment in the production came when he began working on “There’s no Turning Back,” a song about Mendez’ childhood and the events that led him to become an outlaw.

“The first time I worked with the lyricist and composer who were working together on that song was just a really wonderful session because the music is very beautiful,” Nowlen said.

This is the first time Nowlen had his freshman seminar students perform an opera. The decision to do so did not come until about a week before class started when Nowlen learned that Pittman, who is trained on how to teach students opera, would be teaching the class as well.

Nowlen rewrote the syllabus for the class about five days before the semester began.

Although Nowlen and Pittman felt tentative about having non-music majors in the class, they said they learned over the course of the semester that non-music students, like freshman photography major Vinh Tran, can also be a valuable asset to the class. Tran contributed valuable work to the opera by organizing and creating the image projections that make up the background.

“The idea of (The Devil’s Highway) being the One Book for the campus is really powerful in light of what’s going on in Arizona and in light of our status as a nation that’s supposed to be humane and have open arms and open doors,” Pittman said.

“Devil’s Highway” Opera located in Capistrano Hall, Room 15:

Today at 5:30 p.m.

Admission is free

Tzahuiztil Sanchez can be reached at [email protected]