You’ve probably already read an article about the upcoming play The Little Mermaid. You might find POVs from the cast or a story behind the script. But these school plays wouldn’t be possible without tech crew working behind the scenes. I decided to spend an hour with the crew to see what goes into the technicalities of putting on a production at Timpview.
From the start, director and Timpview teacher, Mrs. Napeirski didn’t waste time, shouting out a list of things that needed to get done. Light timing coordination, resetting a sound board to match with microphones, finishing pieces of the set… It was chaotic.
Students started up power tools, and it freaked me out when they started creating sparks as they fixed up the metal bases of some set pieces. Some people were sitting on the floor painting sunset gradients on a wood staircase. People in the light booth kept calling out “going dark” before the whole auditorium would go pitch black. Amidst the noise and action, I pulled people aside to talk to them about their jobs in tech.
Introducing members of tech:
Genna Cluff, Senior — Stage Manager
Skyler Millet — Tech Director, set design/building
Kimi Shropshire, Senior — Head of Sound
Kennedy Dalley, Senior — Lights
April North, Senior — Head of Painting
Zooey Bills, Sophomore — Costumes
Mrs. Napierski — Director/Drama teacher
Why did you pick this area? What got you interested?
Genna: “My sophomore year, I became an assistant stage manager. I went to all the rehearsals, helped throw down blocking, sat in the wings, and helped cue people. I thought it was super fun, so me and Mrs. Napierski talked and decided to make me stage manager!”
Skyler: “I’ve had a lot of experience building and [doing] construction. My dad owns a construction company, and I’ve worked with him like my whole life.”
Kimi: “I started tech sophomore year, and I chose sound. The Head Sound took me under his wing, and ever since then, I’ve done nothing but sound.”
Kennedy: “I’ve done backstage before, in elementary school. I did spotlight in sixth grade which was fun. I thought [lights] was interesting, and I kind of wanted to try something new.”
April: “I love to paint, I’ve done art for forever. This is my first year of being in this class, but I’ve helped paint sets for previous shows.”
Zooey Bills: “I’ve always had a little bit of an artistic eye for fashion, and my dad’s really into fashion. He makes his own clothes a lot of the time. And I really wanted to be in costumes, for this show especially, because it has a lot of costumes.”
Mrs. Napierski: “I did theater growing up, I started when I was in first grade, and really loved performing. In college, when I knew I wanted to be a drama teacher, I realized that I spent [all] my time growing up performing, but I never knew what it was like to be backstage. So [during] my entire four years at school, I didn’t do any productions, I only did backstage work!”
What’s the best part of your job?
Genna: “I really love interacting with all the actors and techs. I’ve always been the mom friend, so it’s fun to be the stage manager because now I get to do that for lots of people.”
Skyler: “I get to boss everyone around (haha), but just being here to hang out and have fun is the best part.”
Kimi: “I love when the show comes together and you get that satisfying feeling of accomplishment when you hit every cue and it sounds good.”
Kennedy: “Lights is very lax for the most part. It’s still a lot of fun, which is nice because it’s not super stressful.”
April: “I just love seeing it all come together. And I also do the shows, I’m in the Little Mermaid, so I love having a sneak peek at the set before everyone else.”
Zooey: “I get to work really closely with Mrs. Napeirski, and the costume shop is so much fun.”
Mrs. Napierski: “I really love when a show starts to come together. The kids are super passionate, the techs are super passionate about it. But as much as I love watching them perform and work, I also love the silly goofy moments we have during rehearsals.”
What’s the hardest part of your job?
Genna: “You need to be able to manage your time really well and be able to just keep up on things.” (assignments, projects, paperwork, etc.) “And having to be able to adapt to everyone, because everyone works differently, and as a stage manager, you’re communicating with everyone.”
Skyler: “Getting everyone to get their work done on time.”
Kimi: “Troubleshooting. Trying to make everyone happy. My opinion overlaps [with others’] all the time, and the hardest thing is remembering that the director is always right.”
Kennedy: “Because I don’t know a lot about lights, it’s hard to retain a lot of that [new] information. Also, the light board is scary because it’s so easy to mess things up.”
April: “I love detail work in my own paintings, and so it’s really hard to get that detail work that’s still visible from the audience.”
Zooey: “The hardest part is budget. It’s kind of difficult because we couldn’t really buy much for like the leads, and that’s where all our budget was going, to the leads.”
Mrs. Napierski: “It’s a lot of hours. So we, my actors, my techs, we come in on weekends, we stay after school, late, like we’re here sometimes at 9 pm. We were here every day of our fall break for like seven hours, all day.”
What’s your favorite project you’ve ever done?
Skyler: “Building the ship!”
Kimi: “Working live shows at the Rise. I learned so many different techniques.”
Kennedy: “It was so cool to work on Seussical and The Woodsman because they’re such polar opposites.”
April: “In Seussical last year, there were these giant book pages, and me and my friend got to design them and paint them.”
Zooey: “Some of my favorite costumes [to work on] have been the chef’s costumes [for The Little Mermaid]. They’re very fun, very showgirlesque. And I love Ursula. Ursula has a cage skirt with wheels on the bottom, and it holds these really huge sequin tentacles.”
What’s something you think people don’t appreciate about tech?
Genna: “People overlook the fact that we are also high school students. Like, if a production isn’t very good, people will be like, ‘oh, it’s okay, they’re just high school actors.’” On the other hand, if a costume goes wrong or the sound gets messed up, “they’re like, ‘why is tech going so wrong?’ But in all fairness, we are only 17 [students], building and taking care of a lot of things.”
Skyler: “People definitely don’t know how much time and energy and hard work goes into teching a show.”
Kimi: “How much goes into even one microphone. You have to make sure that you’re having input, that you’re not overpowering the music, and also not overpowering other actors with microphones. You have to watch what they’re doing on stage to make sure that they’re not going too close to the speakers that could cause feedback.”
Kennedy: “Just the amount of work that goes into it. It’s so overlooked. The actors bring it to life, and I respect actors a lot. But there’s just so much more. Tech does A LOT.”
April: “How much we have to do with the little amount of time we have to do it.”
Zooey: “I feel like people don’t talk about lighting enough. Lighting really just makes a show come together. If we were sitting in a dark auditorium with one light, looking at the whole stage, it would be so boring! But we have such amazing lighting techs here that put in so much effort and have the coolest light shows.”
Mrs. Napierski: “How much work they do. I think an audience [will] come in and they don’t realize how many hours and time and energy went in to what the techs have to do.”
What’s been a highlight from preparing for the little mermaid?
Genna: “I’m also the head of props, so I’ve loved doing the grotto.”
Kennedy: “We have all the colors picked out for the lights and I love the colors.”
April: “The different types of pieces that we’re doing. There’s the sea and the land, so it’s been fun to do so many different things.”
Zooey: “Getting to talk to all the fun people here and hear about them and learn their visions.”
Mrs. Napierski: “I think it’s really cool watching the moments when there’s techs and actors who all kind of just freeze in time to watch a really beautiful moment on stage.”
Anything you’d like to add?
“COME SEE THE LITTLE MERMAID, NOVEMBER 13-18!!”
