The curtain in University Theatre rises to a scene of eight actors in Covent Garden in Edwardian England. They go about their daily life as wealthy, well-dressed Londoners leaving the opera to enter the stage. Eliza speaks the first words and someone runs into her, accidently knocking to the ground her basket of flowers she is selling.
While the audience is focused on the actors, it is unaware of the others working in the theatre to make the play go on.
Stagehands have prepared the set and props for the next scene change. In the light booth, the lighting designer cues the lights to dim to signal the setting set. Also in the light booth is the stage manager, who tells the crew when to raise the curtain for the start of the show.
Those in the sound booth control the actors' microphones. In the dressing rooms offstage, costumes and wigs are being organized for quick changes.
A show such as "My Fair Lady," which opens at 7:30 tonight at University Theatre, consists of several components. The actors are the face of the performance, but there are so many more people who have worked to transfer the show into what the audience sees each night. Thirty students comprise the cast but there are at least 20 people involved behind the scenes.
"I know that some people believe that you can have theater as long as you have a performer and an audience in a space and that's really all that you need," Corrina Morris, the stage manager, said. "But I feel as though the standards that we have come to expect from live theater now are dependent upon the costumers, the set technician, the lighting designers, the sound designers, all of the people who work behind the scenes who are just as important as the performer if not more so at times."
DRESSING THE ACTOR
For most shows in the Department of Theatre and Dance, the costume shop will make several pieces, but "My Fair Lady" is an exception. Because of the large cast and a small budget, many of the costumes were rented from other theaters or taken from storage.
Because they are not making their own costumes, the costume coordinator, junior theater design and technology major Abby Rahn, has had to be less selective about the color palette. She was limited to what they received from rental.
"It's kind of weird looking at it down [in the costume shop] because some colors don't match," Rahn said. "They don't go together but onstage they'll look great. I've learned so much about color and putting costumes together through this whole experience, because it's not something you think about until you're actually designing it."
Working with Rahn is Melanie Mortimore, the director of the costume shop. She is in charge of every aspect of the shop including supervising the students and staff, budgeting, making hats and jewelry, cutting out patterns, organizing the laundry crew and much more.
"The thing I love most about costuming is doing things from a lot of different time periods," Mortimore said.
One of the main challenges for the shop is keeping track of all of the costumes, especially for a large show such as this. Each actor has about three costumes, many of which contain about 10 pieces.
TRANSFORMING THE CHARACTERS
One person who works closely with the costume shop is Robert Dirden, the hair and makeup designer. Together they create the full concept for each character seen on the stage.
Dirden originally started out as costume designer, which eventually led him to designing hair and makeup concepts for shows as well.
"I like transforming," he said. "I like the before-and-afters. I like seeing someone walk out in full costume, makeup and hair and not looking like themselves."
The process for choosing hairstyles for this transformation begins with reading the script and talking to the director to figure out his vision of the show. If the director decides to change the time period or the setting, then the hairstyles will change too. The next step is research. He said he often uses magazines such as Time and Life to capture the style.
"They have the best pictures in the world because they're of actual people, not of what the movies wanted it to look like," Dirden said.
For "My Fair Lady," the hair reflects the styles of early 20th-century England and the makeup is simple, just heightened for the stage.
One of the main goals in designing the hair and makeup for the show was showing the differences between the social classes represented onstage, Dirden said.
At preliminary meetings with the students, Dirden showed them how he wanted them to do their hair and makeup, which may include putting on hats or wigs. For the actual show, each cast member will do their own. For shows with a more intricate makeup designer or a smaller cast, someone else may help the students with their hair and makeup.
As with other design aspects of the theater, Dirden said hair and makeup design as well as costume design could be really difficult when trying to work with multiple people.
"A lot of your ideas don't actually make it to the stage because they're changed by somebody else, but that's the collaborative [aspect] that is enjoyable for most shows," he said.
SETTING THE SCENE
During the construction of about 11 set pieces, John Sadler, scene shop supervisor, worked along with theater technology students to build, paint and upholster all aspects of the set.
"I like to tell people that I teach kids not to cut their fingers off, but it's a little bit more than that," Sadler said about his role in the shop.
One of the most intricate set pieces in the show is professor Henry Higgins' study, which weighs close to three tons, Sadler said. Working with such large pieces can create problems such as how to get it on and off stage and where to store it.
"Sometimes you'll run into unexpected problems," said Sara Morand, senior theater design and technology major and scene shop staff member. "Sometimes things take a little bit more time than you expect them to."
Sadler said this is where his levelheaded nature is most beneficial. Instead of getting upset when things get behind schedule, he gets people to focus and keep moving along. For the
"My Fair Lady" set, the scene shop staff had two fewer weeks than it did for other shows because of Spring Break.
"The most rewarding part is when you see the finished product," Sadler said. "You spent weeks and hours and sleepless nights working on these giant pieces of things. ... When it all comes together, that is the most rewarding part. To see one giant cohesive thing that you know that you helped do that."
MAKING THE PROPS
Not only is the set made in the scene shop, but so are most of the props. For "My Fair Lady," the list of props ranges from furniture to books and from chocolate to fake birds.
Heather Sinclair, a junior theater design and technology major, fell in love with the props side of theater when working on the show "Love's Labours Lost" her freshman year. For "My Fair Lady," she acts as prop master and is in charge of listing the props needed and then either renting or working with people to make them.
"I get asked a lot of questions and props is so obscure that there's no teacher that's really in charge of it," Sinclair said. "So the prop master is sort of thrown in that area and expected to do most of the work."
One of the most challenging parts about her job is making sure that all of the props fit the correct time period, she said. For example, she had to cut all of the erasers off the pencils because erasers would not have been placed on the ends of pencils at that time.
Another difficult aspect was finding the gramophones and victrolas, the authentic styles of record players, used in the show. Not many people sell them anymore and if they do, they are too expensive to buy. So just as the costume shop rented costumes, the scene shop borrowed props from other theaters and universities.
LIGHTING THE STAGE
Lighting the stage for a theater production is more complicated than flipping a switch. Lights are placed above the stage, on the sides of the stage and above the audience facing the stage. The lighting designer, Diana Kaiser, plugs all of the lighting cues into the light board.
Not only does Kaiser write the cues, but she also picks out where the lights are going to be positioned and what the colors of the lights are going to be. Different colors are created by placing gels, similar to colored pieces of plastic, over the lights. Because "My Fair Lady" is a musical, Kaiser said she could go a little crazy with the color.
"Whenever anyone asks me about color choices for the show, I like to say cotton candy," she said. "I picked a lot of blues and lavenders and pinks, and I have this new color that I've never used before in my top light."
One of the main difficulties Kaiser has faced with lighting this show has been with the positioning of the lights. Because the set is so large, she has had to rely on mostly top lighting instead of lighting from the side.
While the music carries the mood for a musical, Kaiser said lighting can enhance what the music does by helping to create different scenes and moods. It acts almost like its own
character, she said.
"The thing is, people don't really notice lighting," Kaiser said. "They don't really know that it's causing them to feel certain things. But that's the goal is to have people not notice the lights changing but carry the mood and the emotion of the action behind it."
CHECKING THE SOUND
Because "My Fair Lady" is a musical, sound is one of the most important elements. If the audience cannot hear the music and the singing, then the show loses its purpose.
Carrie Scott is the sound designer for the show. Her job entails making the sound effects, writing the sound cues, running the microphones, running the sound for the orchestra pit and doing anything else audio-related in the show.
Wanting to become a roadie someday, Scott said her biggest challenge so far has been working with all the wireless microphones. Each of the 30 actors and two offstage singers has a wireless microphone, so she has to make sure none of the frequencies run into each other. This can get even more difficult when people have their cell phones on during the show because those frequencies and other radio waves can mess up the sound as well.
RESEARCHING THE ROLE
As members of the audience open their programs, they read the cast list and maybe the director's note. Along with these is another little known note providing some background on the play. This note is from the dramaturg.
Allison Jones, junior theatre studies and English literature double major, became the dramaturg for "My Fair Lady" by accident. She just happened to be in the room when the theater historian found the previous dramaturg was unavailable. After volunteering, Jones began her research on Edwardian England.
Jones' main role is to fill in any blanks the actors may have on the time period, the play or anything else the director needs. All of her research went into the dramaturgical book for reference. She cited topics such as money, social structure and women's suffrage so the actors had a better understanding of what they were saying and the world they would be living in.
With about a month and a half to do the research, Jones said her biggest challenge as dramaturg was sorting through and condensing all of the research. But as a self-described nerd at heart, she liked being able to delve deeper into a play.
"I've had to try to think ‘what isn't explained in the play? What could use explanations?'" she said.
CALLING THE SHOTS
Corrina Morris said the best way to describe her job as stage manager during a performance was to compare her to an orchestra conductor.
"We make sure that all of the things you don't necessarily see, like set pieces moving on and off stage or people changing costumes or pieces of lighting equipment coming on or turning off [runs smoothly]," she said.
During the rehearsal process, Morris has other jobs. She is the main line of communication between the actors, designers, directors and shop technicians. She takes notes for the director and guarantees that breaks occur on time according to Actor's Equity.
Morris began stage managing when she was in high school. Though she started as an actor, she soon fell in love with this other side of theater.
"I had always enjoyed acting and I love theater just as a medium in general, but really, when I was up there in the lighting booth looking down at everything that I had helped to create and having that sense of control over seeing the lights come up when you call it, it's a very odd sort of power but it's actually kind of magical for me," Morris said.
She has worked on many different shows at Ball State, but she said "God's Ear" and last year's dance show, "The Devil Made Me Dance," have been her favorites.
The biggest challenge, Morris said, has been working with such a large cast. The last show contained eight cast members, so making sure everybody stays in the loop about rehearsals and changes has been more difficult.
Although the audience sees the actors onstage, Morris understands the importance of having a good set of technicians and crew behind the scenes and said she feels their work is the best when it goes unnoticed.
"We're in more places than you can imagine," she said. "If you've ever seen a live play or a concert or if you watch the Grammys on TV, you're watching the direct work of technicians and stage managers. ... At the end of the night, most of the applause we know is going to [the actor] rather than the set that he walks on. But it is good to know that without us the show would not be what it is."
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