The Theatre buzzes with activity as students practice for the upcoming musical, “The Prom.” Actors rehearse their lines on stage, mingling with one another to recreate how the stage will be on the days of the show.
The Lights Crew Head and Designer, Taylor Young (10), sits in the house, scribbling on her notepad as she watches the actors.
Her preparation is imperative for “The Prom” to unfold perfectly for the audience. Every light cue made by Young is tailored to the show to highlight the colors of the costume. Each emotion is reflected in the colors on the stage.
Technical Director Clint Webster (‘10) said that since “The Prom” is a musical, there are more difficult sets and movements involved than in plays. This means that tech will have more layers and complications compared to other productions.
“Oftentimes, depending on the play itself, we may be in a single location,” Webster said. “[However], in “The Prom,” we’re going to actually be in multiple locations, both in and out of the school. Our challenges [include] moving set pieces and maintaining the action of the play without any dead space for transitions, trying to shorten those as much as possible, and allow for set pieces to move in and out and to seamlessly flow from one location to another. Musicals [are] difficult [because] there is more of everything. There are more actors, there are more costumes, there are more sets, there’s more lighting, and there’s more sound. There’s usually more props. In addition to the normal directing, there’s also voice work for the singing and choreography. Those will have technical components.”
As the Crew Head for lights, Young (10) said that this musical will be particularly challenging due to the new equipment that was recently installed in the theatre.
“Our lights are currently getting redone because our curtains recently got rehung, and we also got a big speaker installed,” she said. “We only have a temporary solution right now. We also had to rehang [the lights] because the top curtains are higher. We don’t like seeing the lights on those curtains up there, so you have to make the lights lower.”
This new speaker is specially attuned for Westview’s theatre, meaning the sound quality has greatly improved. With this new speaker, the sound crew has to refamiliarize themselves with this new technology.
On top of having new lights to get accustomed to, Young also has to take notes about lighting conditions for the whole musical.
“Usually I just start by reading the script and then taking notes on what I think is going to happen,” Young said. “Then, when I get to our design meeting, I’ll be able to see the set design and the costumes, because those colors also affect my decisions. I take notes just to kind of separate all of the songs and the scene changes for myself. So for “The Play That Goes Wrong,” I had like an entire page filled with notes for myself and things that I needed to get done. During our first tech run-through, I take extra notes on things that could be improved.”
Communication between tech departments is one of the most important aspects of preparing for a production. Webster noted that this is typically the trickiest part.
“The main challenge is trying to figure out how we can coordinate everything together to make sure that everybody gets what they need when they need it,” he said. “For instance, a doorway that an actor comes through to enter a scene, and the specific way that they move through the stage. If all of that has to be still worked on, then it helps to have the door in place so that the director can give notes that are helpful to the actor as they are trying to block the scene. So even if that door may not be the most important part of the scenic design, it still needs to happen first or earlier because the director needs that piece available.”
Webster and Director Robert Townsend have spent years establishing protocols.
“All of these things are keys that will help our students do well, not just here in theater, but in developing leadership skills and in learning to do things that they may not have the opportunity to do outside of here,” Webster said. “It’s important for us to try to develop a standard way that we talk about these things. Most importantly, we teach students, especially those that are in leadership positions, how to teach [others]. We’ve found that our greatest success is in seeing the students teach each other. We try to foster that and allow everybody to lift each other up and to teach each other because there’s always new things to learn. No one can pretend to know everything in theater. So if we’re able to help teach the students how to teach each other, then we can focus on developing the next step after that.”
