Samuel Jendrysik, Sophomore
Legally Blonde. The show that sold out every night at the high school and gave many of the actors stress headaches. But what does this masterpiece look like, not through the eyes of the parents, friends and classmates who flocked to the auditorium to watch, but from backstage with the run crew? The self proclaimed “lifeblood of the show” work just as hard as the cast, for much less credit. More often than not when I told people I was doing crew for the show, the responses I got were only ever one syllable. “Oh.” “Cool”.
I think I know why they react this way. In my mind it’s because they don’t see the work the crew puts into the show. All they see is us moving things out slowly and walking back slower. What they don’t see is the mad scramble backstage, or the time we put in. The movements behind the curtain are sometimes just as orchestrated as the ones happening on stage. Just one of our transitions during the show went as follows. Two rather heavy salon chairs and a pink door need to come off. A platform, a wheeled chair, a not wheeled chair, two flags, and two benches need to come on in near complete darkness, as quickly as humanly possible, without any of the five runners we have being injured. This is just one of the many transitions that make the show possible.
Now we come to the shows themselves, the displays of the work put in. For the actors it’s stressful. But for the crew? It’s a mad scramble for over two hours and we have to be on the ball the whole time. That said, the experience of crew was one I’m eager to repeat. The environment, though stressful, was a lot of fun. So maybe when people react to crew with their one word responses, they simply view the moving, not the work. Or maybe they just don’t care.