An unusual opera highlighting the plight of the homeless opens Friday in Vancouver's poorest neighbourhood.

Condemned: A Work in Progress is the story of several people tossed out of their low-rent hotel in the city's Downtown Eastside.

It is playing for three nights at the Carnegie Centre, in the same neighbourhood where homeless activists occupied a building earlier this week to protest the lack of affordable housing.

Patrick Foley, one of the writers, has been homeless himself.

"I been semi-homeless — couch surfing and stuff — and it's not something I wish on anyone," he said in an interview with CBC Radio.

"I can imagine some people who sleep on streets or under viaducts, some of my friends sleep that way. It's not a life. All you're concerned with is survival."

People who are struggling aren't cut out for street protests, he said.

"They don't have any money to voice their concerns to city hall or government so hopefully this opera will help mobilize some of the people who don't speak up and get everyone on the same wavelength," he said.

It feels better to sing about it than to protest, Foley said, and that's just what several residents of the area are doing.

The cast of Condemned is mainly homeless and low-income people, with little or no experience on stage. 

Debbie Gosselin is making her stage debut as a panhandler in the opera.
     
"The things that happen in this play happen every day in this community and I just want people to know that what I'm acting is reality for people," she said.

Performer Bharbara Gudmundson describes her role in this opera as the "ranting political protester."

Poor and disabled herself, Gudmundson has seen her once-affordable neighbourhood squeezed by condo development until she fears there is nothing left for people like her.

Appetite for opera

"As far as I've seen here, if you follow that path just a little bit further, there is no room for us," she said.

The opera "explains that really well," she said.

Carnegie Centre director Ethel Witte said there is a big appetite for opera in the Downtown Eastside.

"I think of opera as a passionate form, and there's a lot of passion in this neighbourhood," she said.

Tickets to all three performances of Condemned have already been snapped up.

"Operas to me, seem to be about ... larger-than-life experiences, and certainly the people in this neighbourhood are struggling with some very big issues that are larger than life," Witte said.

The opera has a surprisingly upbeat ending. The homeless group bands together and wins their battle for a place to live.

Outside the Carnegie Community Centre, things aren't quite so rosy. Cheap hotels and rooming houses continue to fall to make way for more upscale development, Foley said.