At Tufts, it's common to see students dedicating a large part of their afternoons, evenings and sometimes dawns to their extracurricular activities. For every one of your friends that is a Tisch Reading Room devotee, there is an equally enthusiastic LCS tutor or Class Council member.
The theater community at Tufts provides an excellent example of that sub-species of students whose curricular and extracurricular interests are engaged in an unending battle with one another. While those seen on stage during any given production immediately strike us as gluttons for exceedingly late evenings in the Balch Arena Theater, surely we're not so naive as to think that the actors who grace the Arena stage are the only ones who burn the midnight oil for the sake of the thespian arts. Did the sets and costumes make themselves? Were the sound cues simply a fortuitous accident?
Each production put on in the Arena requires a cast of characters of another sort: the production staff. In this edition of Weekender, The Daily peeks behind the curtain of secrecy that surrounds these integral members of the Tufts theater community.
Is that your production staff or are you just happy to see me?
The production staff (p-staff) of any given show is made up of the behind-the-scenes workers whose roles range from that of stage manager to producer to choreographer to set, sound, lighting, makeup, costume or hair designer, among others.
In most department shows (that is, the three shows per year produced by the Department of Drama and Dance), the students on the p-staff work under a faculty mentor. The mentor accompanies his or her student apprentice to p-staff meetings and gives the student a second opinion for design ideas. On the other hand, for student-run theater groups like Torn Ticket II, Bare Bodkin or Pen, Paint & Pretzels, students are their own bosses.
At the beginning of a production, the members of the p-staff will "sit down with the director to look at the angle they're looking at," said junior Brian Smith, one of Tufts' resident producers.
At this session, the director talks about his or her "overall concept for the show," said senior Luke Brown, who has worked as a costume, hair and makeup designer. From that initial meeting, each member of the p-staff develops and ultimately creates his or her piece of the show.
Lighten up; it's just fashion
For Brown, the first step is to "gather inspirational research based on what the director's concept is." Brown has worked as the costume designer for several Tufts productions, including "School for Scandal," "Hay Fever," "Metamorphoses," "Little Shop of Horrors" and "Trojan Women," and as assistant costume designer for "Monster" and "Parade."
After he gathers research, Brown maps out and presents inspirations from fashion magazines and other sources on research boards. Then, after submitting rough sketches based on his design concept, said Brown, "All my final renderings are due to show to the cast at a design presentation."
The existence of the Costume Shop on the bottom floor of Aidekman means that Brown and his fellow Shop employees are able to construct some of the pieces in-house. Because of limited time, however, "you can only build so many 'looks,'" said Brown.
Thus, the Shop is utilized to build costumes that seem too unique to find elsewhere or to make garments meant to fit non-standard sizes. Additional costumes must come from "preexisting garments that best capture the spirit of the rendering," said Brown. These typically come from nearby universities or from costume houses from which Tufts rents each piece it needs.
Due to the variables involved in trying to locate these garments, the designer must "constantly make design choices from the rendering to the time each costume gets on stage," Brown said.
Mary Chapin Karp-enter
Arena-turned-Mount Olympus, Arena-turned-Vietnam, Arena-turned-suburban St. Louis inheritance, Arena-turned-blank slate for Jesus parable: senior Jason Karp has seen it all. Karp's experience as a carpenter for every department show since he arrived (save the very first) truly qualifies him as a behind-the-scenes aficionado, whether that experience came in the form of assistant technical director for "School for Scandal," as co-technical director for "Corpus Christi" and "Ring Around the Moon" or as technical director for "Metamorphoses," "Parallel Lives," and this month's "Hair."
As a carpenter, Karp works at the Scene Shop on 66 Colby Street and in the Arena itself to help construct the sets required for each production. Karp describes the technical director as the person "in charge of transforming the [set] designer's plan into reality."
More specifically, he explained, technical directors use AutoCAD, a computer-aided drafting program to turn the set designer's sketches into formal blueprints. From there, they "manage the budget, the resources, and manage the entire construction process until [the set is] built," said Karp.
Because the Arena is so frequently in use, sets must be built off-site at the aforementioned Set Shop. "When you're not building directly in a space, you build modually," said Karp.
In other words, the construction crews build each part of the set in smaller pieces and then transport those pieces on "load-in" day (usually about a week before the show's opening) to the Arena and set them up there. Once the set is in place, the technical director "works 24 hours a day to make sure the set's fine" as actors begin interacting with it, Karp explained.
As a technical director at Tufts, Karp works with a crew of carpenters and often builds pieces himself as well. "You could be a technical director and never lift a finger, or you could be a technical director and do it all yourself," he said.
Following the closing night of a production, "as soon as the house doors close" the technical director is also in charge of directing set strike, said Karp, referring to the aptly named process of swiftly and often brutally removing the set from the Arena.
With these considerations in mind, of the biggest challenges of next week's production of "Hair" may in fact be the deconstruction and subsequent load-out of the 1972 Volkswagen bus Karp found on Craigslist and incorporated into the musical's set.
There's no business like show business
Behind-the-scenes work is, of course, hardly limited to construction. For those disinclined toward hemming or heavy lifting, there are the more titularly esoteric roles of stage manager or producer.
Sophomore Jen Scherck has stage managed for both department and non-department productions, including "A Delicate Balance," "The Pillowman" and last week's "Heads or Tails." She also assistant stage managed "A New Brain."
The stage manager, explained Scherck, provides "the left-brain side of theater" for a given production.
While the "director is the creative outlet," she said, "the stage manager basically keeps the organization there and makes sure everyone's communicating really well."
Junior Brian Smith has also tended towards the administrative side of theater as a producer for shows including "Hair," "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "Woyzeck," "A New Brain," "Metamorphoses" and "Clue."
Smith described the producer as being "responsible for handling both the financial aspects and the publicity and marketing aspects of the show." This dual role makes perfect sense, said Smith, because "you need to advertise your show to make money."
"Until you handle the minutiae of the budget of each show and determine how to sell it to each audience," Smith said, it's difficult to comprehend what a producer does.
The advertising process can include soliciting departments with a possible interest in a show, selling advertising space in the production's program, and writing letters to the parents of the actors and p-staff asking for donations. For last fall's "Metamorphoses," for example, Smith reached out to the classics departments at Tufts because of a perceived interest in the play's subject matter.
Smith also puts his more artistic skills to use in the theater community in the form of show posters. His glossy broadsides have appealingly advertised most of the shows for which he's been on p-staff. Smith admits that his design expertise comes not from classical training but rather from the Internet. Still, his fancy Photoshop footwork is an integral part of many of Tufts' productions.
One big, happy family
Contrary to what one might assume, relations between student p-staff members, actors and faculty provide no juicy stories of conflict and betrayal.
When interacting with faculty, "you pretty much have free reign to do what you want as long as you have a good product," said Brown.
The hardest part, Brown said, is that, in a department show, "sometimes as a designer you have to be able to tell the faculty director that they can't have what they want" due to material, time or budget constraints.
Asked if there was a disconnect between actors and the p-staff, said Brown, "I don't think anyone's getting more credit than they should be getting. As a designer, you get a degree of satisfaction from a job well done."
"Because I'm not part of a rehearsal process, there's bound to be a divide," said Karp. "Not that that's a bad thing."
Also, everyone involved in a production is included in the traditional pre-show cast-bonding rituals, said Karp, thus drawing together the students from all the various facets of a show.
Stepping out from behind the curtain
Step aside, Hank Azaria. Many of the p-staffers have also found their career path in the depths of the Arena rather than at the center of its stage. Brown recently received an acceptance letter from the Yale School of Drama and plans to work towards an MFA in costume design there.
"Since [Tufts] has a relatively small department, there's an opportunity for a lot of hands-on experience," Brown said of his undergrad experience here at Tufts. "I was able to put together a portfolio of realized work that got me into grad school."
Karp, too, will be putting his technical direction skills to use as a project manager or field superintendent for Shawmut Design and Construction. "Budgets, controlling resources, controlling machinery, controlling people; it's all the same stuff," he said, comparing his work in theater to his future role.
While Scherck defines her work as stage manager as a "pretty big hobby," she plans to teach rather than stay in the theater realm. "A lot of the skills I've learned in stage managing will transfer over," she said.
Smith sometimes finds it hard to maintain an interest in his courses now that he's "decided [producing] is what I want to do with my life."
And... scene.
Next time you're in the Arena at the end of a show, know that the last round of applause goes to the production staff, who, along with the actors, started working on the show many months prior to opening night.
Then, on your way out, sternly encourage Brian Smith to do his homework.
