One-Woman Powerhouse: Meet Opal Raven

Photo by Sam Brewer

Ida Rosenstein

In her performances, Opal Raven has a style that I might describe as “goth-circus-cabaret.” With her dark makeup and dangerous props, each act feels like its own, individual Halloween night — after all, as she tells me over Zoom, October is her busiest month of the year. Opal performs sideshow and as a one-woman show across the United States, displaying her unique blend of talents: sword-dancing, fire and LED props, snake-charming, and burlesque.

Opal began her performing arts career in high school with karate routines and belly dance. Later, she broke out into the burlesque scene through Gypsy Layne Cabaret, a New England burlesque and cabaret troupe, as a solo performer and part of a duet known as “Heart-Shaped Box.” Her interest with variety shows started in the Gypsy Layne troupe and, during the Covid-19 pandemic, expanded into fire tricks, flow arts, and circus arts. In 2022, Opal joined up with Berkshire Pride for Berkshire Busk! Festival and picked up roadside busking afterwards.

“Busking allows you to have a lot of interactions with the audience and to make them part of the show,” she explains to me. “There’s a bit of magic when it comes to the audience changing.”

As she explains to me, the audience members who commit to watching an entire show are the ‘captive audience.’ The other ones, who are usually watching to kill time before a different event or only stay briefly, are the most fun to surprise: “When you have somebody who shows up knowing ‘hey, I’m about to go see a fire performer,’ they have a preconceived notion of what they’re going to (experience). But, if you just have some random person walking down the street and you are just slinging a giant ball of fire around you…it’s so fantastic to see the shock that they go through.” It is rare to see a busker working with fire instead of singing or dancing. There’s only so much time that a busker has to capture passerby’s attention and Opal Raven likes to keep people on their toes.

Photo by Sam Brewer

Opal recalls to me a moment from an event she performed at last year: she did a fire-eating routine to a jazzy cover of Louis Prima’s, “I Wanna Be Like You.” A little boy watched her dance and swallow flames from behind his mother’s legs. The song’s ending lyrics go “Can learn to be like someone like you.” At that moment, Opal says “I pointed to this little kid and he looked at himself and put his little hands up,” she smiles and makes her eyes wide, mimicking the boy’s expression, “and he said ‘like me?’ He was just so happy and dancing and he came over after the show and gave me a big hug… Those little moments and those little connections really make an impact on people.”

She also has a strong passion for the weird and unexpected, telling me, “It’s cool to keep throwing those unsuspecting people curveballs, cause life is weird, and circus is weird, and busk is weird, and I’m in for all of it!” While her acts involve daring tricks coated in the whimsical gothic, Opal continues to show love to the stranger things outside of her performances as well.

Her co-stars in her snake-charming act are her own, beloved pet snakes (she has seven of them!) and she began The Hissing Booth, a reptile education station, to help dispel myths and promote reptile care. She also cares for three geckos and a spider alongside her snakes. Her love for what she calls “the unlovables,” animals with undeserved ‘scary’ reputations, ties back to her spooky performances. Opal believes that “the dark, the weird, the unusual, the creepy, the spooky – it’s all important… Having the yin and the yang represented in our world is so important.”

Photo by Sam Brewer

Performers like Opal Raven joining the ranks of Berkshire Busk! with less traditional acts not only create variety but a more inclusive space. For Opal, Berkshire Busk! is a “highlight” of her performing career thanks to the supportive nature of the staff and fellow performers. She mentions that performance spaces can seem so competitive a lot of the time, but busk has been “supportive, warm, (and) welcoming.” Something that distinguishes it from organized, venue performances is how it allows her to connect with the audience. On a stage, the only light is on the performer and it’s difficult to even see the audience, let alone interact with them. Busk removes that barrier and allows Opal to adapt to the energy of her crowd. The simple act of eye contact or gesturing to an audience member can do so much to enhance a spectator’s experience.

From years of experience doing both hired shows and roadside busking, Opal Raven knows how not only to captivate audiences, but how to involve them in the routine as well. She comments that audience interaction is more difficult with her acts because she works with fire and blades. Yet, she has found that even the smallest connection can enhance her performance and bring viewers deeper into her beautifully dark and whimsical world. Everyone is invited in.