It’s officially fall, meaning our school’s production of Alice in Wonderland is right around the corner. All we see is the finished product, but what about the months of hard work and effort that go into the production?
It takes effort from the cast, costume crew, stage crew, and staff to finish the production. The cast has to memorize their lines, the costume crew has to find costumes for every single cast member, and the stage crew has to build the sets. Then, during the show, there are crew members working on sound, lighting, and helping out backstage.
Image courtesy of Shanon Saleh
The costume crew goes through multiple different costumes before finding the best ones. The costumes have to match the era, tone, and setting of the play. During the show they also help out with quick-changes backstage.
Stage crew has the job of building the set. It starts out with an idea, then they move on to a rough sketch of what it should look like, finally the set is built and painted. The SM theater department is known to include sets that roll on or lower down to the stage, furthering the creativity and ideas they can add to it.
The cast has multiple jobs to do. They have to memorize their lines, choreography and stage directions, and then perform it multiple nights in a row. All cast members’ parts are important in making sure the production goes as planned. They work almost non-stop during and after school to bring you their finished play. “Memorizing the lines and blocking has been kind of hard,” said Camille Tracy, who plays Alice. When asked about her best strategy for memorizing lines she replied “I sit down, and I look at my lines, and I kind of just repeatedly say them loudly to myself, like out loud in a British accent. I do that over and over again,”
The work doesn’t stop there though, in fact, it continues until the last night of the show. The tech crew has to make sure all of the actor’s mics are at the right volume and are working for the whole show. They also have to manage any sound and lighting effects that might be added.
The cast and crew put so much effort into these productions, that the final product is always worth watching. You can go see Alice in Wonderland on November 3,4,5, and 6, and then again on the 10, 11, and 12 in our auditorium.
