On Stage A, Anthony Daniels (the heart and soul of C-3PO) was busily retelling a Tunisian anecdote to his captive audience, entertaining the crowd with his memories of shooting Star Wars in the Saharan desert along with his counterpart R2-D2. And then, without warning, the lovable three-wheeled droid silently rolled on stage. The reaction was instantaneous: everybody jumped to their feet and screamed at the top of their lungs. Outside the enclosed area, a passerby might have thought that a famous rock star had just made a sudden and dramatic appearance. Inside, R2-D2 answered the thunderous welcome with enthusiastic beeps and whistles.
When the deafening cheering thinned to an electric buzz coursing through the audience, Daniels addressed Artoo with a few remarks of welcome, and "translated" his companion's electronic comments. One of those comments, interpreted by Daniels as: "You want to answer questions asked to you by fans?" launched a strange Q&A session, where members of the audience were invited to ask questions to a droid just as they would a live actor. At first, fans were a bit taken aback by this unexpected turn of events, but they soon warmed up to the idea, and decided to play along. Early questions were more humorous in nature: "How much of a pain in the neck was C-3PO to work with?" -- to which Daniels, laughing, translated the little droid's reply as: "Artoo refuses to answer this question." Gradually, however, the crowd moved on to more serious questions, treating R2-D2 like a "real" person. "Do you hide more tools that we haven't seen in the movie?" "How was it to work under the scorching Tunisian sun?" Every time, Artoo patiently answered, and Daniels, reprising one of C-3PO's functions, translated. Of course people knew that R2-D2 was a radio-controlled robot, and that Daniels interpreted the droid's beeps as he thought Artoo would answer, but that didn't keep the fans from jumping into the fantasy and temporarily forgetting the real world. They knew they were really asking their questions to Daniels, but they decided to pretend the inquiries were directed at Artoo himself, doing their part in the illusion Daniels was trying to conjure up. Before too long, the illusion was perfect.
Backstage, ILM's Don Bies was doing a masterful job of coordinating R2-D2's actions with Daniels' witty "translations". When someone asked: "How did it feel to be singed by a laser blast aboard Luke's X-wing during the trench run?" Artoo sadly beeped back, and Daniels translated the little droid's answer as: "Yes, it was very painful, and you still have the scars to prove it, don't you Artoo?" Immediately, Bies turned R2-D2 around to show the large scratch on the back of his head, and an honest murmur of compassion ran through the rows of assembled fans.
With each new question, the spell was woven tighter and tighter. It came to the point where the audience could sometimes understand Artoo's answer on their own by simply interpreting the expressive beeps emerging from the lovable droid, a tribute to the ground-breaking work of Sound Designer Ben Burtt, who gave Artoo his voice more than twenty years ago.
When R2-D2 finally had to bid his fans farewell, people waved and said goodbye, which proved how deeply attached an audience can be to a metal figure convincingly given life. For minutes, magic hung in the air, mingled with the deep satisfaction of having met R2- D2 in person.
