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THE BACKSTAGE
As Drew points out, there is a lot of work to be done. Drew also stated that he began working on the show in June of 2016 before the show opened in November of the same year. Drew and the faculty of the theater arts department determined back in May what shows to perform for the entire school year of 2016-2017.
Drew, as a director, plays a major part in putting on stage productions at OBU. He has to have his hands in every aspect of the show. He has to choose the cast for any show he is directing. During his interview, he made note to his fellow faculty that help him and lead students in various areas of the backstage crews.
Outside of acting, Drew provided many different areas backstage that students are heavily involved in. He mentioned costuming, hair and makeup, scenic design, lighting design, props, and set design. Given all the different departments, it is no surprise that there are more people working backstage compared to on stage.
Mackenzie Holtzclaw, a junior at OBU who is a musical theater major, has been doing work backstage and on stage. She also was interviewed while working on preparing for OBU’s "The Learned Ladies" where she was the costumes crew head. She brings a perspective of working behind the scenes and working on stage with different shows.
During OBU's first play of the fall 2016 semester, Mackenzie played Mayella Ewell in "To Kill a Mockingbird." Shortly after the show, she had to turn around and work on costumes for "The Learned Ladies." While she may not have pulled double duty working on stage and off stage like Jesse, Mackenzie still put just as much time into the production as everyone else.
Jesse Bowron is a senior theater arts major at OBU. He was working both backstage and on stage as an actor for "The Learned Ladies" as the character Ariste. He provides his own interesting angle to the mix. Jesse worked both backstage and on stage acting for "The Learned Ladies." During an interview, he spoke about his part working on stage and working backstage.
All the audience ever sees in an on-stage production is what happens on the stage. The audience sees the actors and actresses, but they do not see what all had to be done for the show to exist. More work is put into a production behind the stage.
The number of jobs backstage is greater than what is done on stage. At Ouachita Baptist University (OBU) the number of backstage workers often outnumbers the number of actors in a show. These workers often go unnoticed outside of being mentioned in a show program. Audiences should be more informed as to what exactly goes into putting on a live stage production. Drew Hampton, Mackenzie Holtzclaw and Jesse Bowron were willing to share what all goes in to putting on a show at OBU.
Drew Hampton, an assistant professor of theatre arts at OBU, spoke on backstage work in an interview. In the interview, he was in the process of preparing for OBU's on stage production of "The Learned Ladies." Drew was the director for the show. Below are clips from his interview.
Jesse and Mackenzie are just two of the numerous students who work backstage for OBU's stage productions. Often all of these people are not recognized by the audience. However not being recognized may be a rather good thing. Drew said during his interview that when something goes wrong that is not related to the actors it is in those times that backstage crews such as sound and lighting are recognized but not in a good light. As Drew said, "if they're all doing their jobs things are so smooth and it's almost like they're not there because everything happened on time, the audience got exactly what they needed and enhanced the overall show but didn't necessarily draw attention to that thing."
An interesting commonality that appears to apply to all crew members of a on stage production is the lack of sleep everyone seems to have. In all the interviews conducted, each person stated that yes they did lose sleep working on the production at the time of the interviews.
Throughout the interviews, one thing that was wanted was a number of man hours it takes to prepare for a stage production. No final number was determined. Drew said he could not figure out the true number of man hours it took to put on "The Learned Ladies." Only rough numbers could ever be provided. Drew spoke about how there are some classes where work for shows is done for whole class periods. An estimate number of a class working on a show in a 1 hour period is 15-20 man hours. The number of man hours from there only drastically increases.
Now as can be seen, there is a significant amount of work that goes in to live stage productions. OBU's Department of Theater Arts works hard every year to entertain students and non academic play goers. To appreciate stage productions more, considering all the work that must be done can possibly help appreciation for the arts.