Producing the fall play requires a lot of hard work from not only from the performers but also from the behind the scenes crew. The crew was in charge of lighting, sound equipment, making props, and numerous more tasks.
The tech crew was working all fall to make many props, including a house, which was their biggest project. However, this year the play took place in the Black Box theater and not Roberts auditorium.
Creative Arts teacher Mark Kravetz said that this presented a new challenge for the crew. One of the bigger challenges it presented was the lighting, and the crew needed more lights to light up the stage as compared to Roberts, and had to hang up lights all over the pipes. “Doing the show in the black box [was] harder, it is a three-quarter theater, there [were] more angles to worry about, the sight angles are harder,” he said.
Creative Arts teacher Robert MacPherson was in charge of the design of the show. He said that the Black Box is a much smaller space than the auditorium, thus the audience was much closer to the stage. This is a good thing because they were more engaged in the performance, but it presents a challenge to the crew. The crew had to make detailed props for the play, since the audience were able to see the designs close up.
The house was a big part of the play and was made from scratch. The crew had to make a full kitchen and even the cabinets from scratch. Their job was to imply and design anything that you would see in a real house. The house also had walls and a few functional doors. Additionally, the crew had to lay down actual hardwood flooring on the stage, and couldn’t just paint it on, they really had attention to detail. “On a classic stage, the audiences is a hundred feet away, in the black box, the audience is from 5 to 15 feet away. So the cabinets we [made had] to look real, and we can’t be as fake,” Mr. MacPherson said.
The play was designed to draw the audience in, and due to how close the audience was, the play really put them in the fictional world. “This show wasn’t about the quantity of the things we made, it was more about the quality,” Mr. MacPherson said. “We [had] a great crew working for us and taking the attention to detail.”
Mr. Kravetz said that he ran a full rehearsal with the cast and Mr. Reynolds with all the light and sound queues. “Because it is a very realistic show, everything [was] more extreme realism, for example, we were able to obtain some real appliances for this show, and expensive furniture, to make it look like a high-end apartment. Also since the audience [was] so close to the action, everything [had] to be extremely detailed,” he said.
The show [was] mostly student-ran and students were running stage and sound. Sophomore Adam Na was in charge of running sound and will be playing all recorded music over the sound system, however, it was at a low volume so the dialogue could still be heard.
Senior Jason Meizels was in the stage manager and had to make sure the play ran well. He said that the crew had to bring every piece of the set from Roberts to the Black Box. Also, the audience was walking through the door of the house as they entered the stage, really putting them in the play. “I do know that lighting a black box is a really different than lighting a proscenium stage. Especially with the audience being on the same level, it [was] a whole different thing to think about, it [was] difficult,” he said. “I think that it [was] one of the nicest sets I have worked on.”
