As a domain, the theater is great at maximizing the minimal – utilizing simple stage elements, props, music, and lighting to convey complex emotions and relationships. This collaboration resulted in two live Opera performances in a 200-person theater that the general public could attend. Along the way, we conducted interviews, videotaped rehearsals, tracked the design documents, wrote memos reflecting on the experience, and video-taped the two final performances. All of these elements act as our dataset from which we extract themes to offer reusable lessons from theater into effective everyday robot expression and character in any environment. Strategies prioritized motions and poses that reinforce the character, utilizing costuming and spatial placement and unique technical capabilities that only robots have. The rehearsal process itself may also be useful to roboticists. While previous social robotics researchers (ourselves included) have created their own theater performances around existing robots, two unique aspects of this work are: (1) a three-month collaboration that was performer-led, in that the roboticists integrated into the existing performing arts structures; and (2) the product of the collaboration was a low-cost robot design, whose appearance, motion capabilities, and controls we designed iteratively throughout the rehearsal process. Robot Designer, Co-Performer, and Director quotes also illustrate how theater methods inform expressive robots built cheaply and effectively, where portability (on/off stage) and flexible timing (via piano or director-cue) are the expectation.