The Student News Website of Susquehannock High School,   Glen Rock, Pennsylvania.

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The Student News Website of Susquehannock High School,   Glen Rock, Pennsylvania.

SHS Courier

The Student News Website of Susquehannock High School,   Glen Rock, Pennsylvania.

SHS Courier

Behind the scenes of “The Phantom of the Opera”

Behind the scenes of The Phantom of the Opera
Tools and decorations under the stairs of the set.
Photo by: Brady Achterberg
Tools and decorations sit patiently under the stairs of the set.

  When the lights dim and the curtains pull back on “The Phantom of the Opera”  on opening night, all the attention will be on the actors.

  But who pulls the curtain? Who dims the lights? Stage crew’s role is the opposite of the play’s cast – if nobody notices them, they will know they  have done their job right.

  Intrepid explorer-journalist Brady Achterberg checked out the set a week before the play to see the work that is done behind the curtain.

***

  On weekends the auditorium lobby becomes a backstage dressing room; tables crowd it, covered in dresses, model heads, cosmetic paints and spare fabrics heaped high. Crew members led by Pam Vasilow pull an endless army of fabrics from the costume chamber (the door near the water fountain marked “STORAGE”) and arrange them into intricate designs in which the actors of Phantom find their characters.

  The crew works 12 hours a day on Saturdays and seven hours on Sundays. All the sets get prepared before the production and destroyed the day after.

  “We make everything,” says Vasilow. “I can’t remember the last time we rented something.”

  The stage floor itself is covered in sawdust and echoes with the shredding sounds of saws. Staircases too wide to fit in your house flank the main set. The crew’s current focus is the set’s structure – cutting out frames and nailing on boards comes now, and painting and dressing comes later.

  The script for Phantom is as close as it can be to the Broadway play, and the crew takes great pains to hold a similar standard of imitation, as Joe Kress, head of the set’s construction, says.

  “Obviously we can’t have a catwalk for the play, so we use something called a shark’s-tooth scrim, which becomes more transparent as you add light,” he says. “It was donated by a parent years ago.”

  As the time for the musical races closer and closer, the work for it mounts higher. But this workload has at least something to do with the low membership, as sophomore and crew member Zach Schiding explains.

     “When you think ‘theater,’ you think music and acting,” says Schiding. “You don’t think set building.”

     This year’s Phantom stars seniors Nathan Coulter as the Phantom and Kayla Anelli as Christine Daae, but don’t forget the light crew moving the spotlights and build crew constructing those fantastic chandeliers. It shows at 7:00 p.m. on April 5th and 6th, and at 2:00 p.m. on the 6th and 7th.

Photo by: Brady Achterberg
A week before the play began, the chandelier still was a work in progress.
Photo by: Brady Achterberg
The stage began to transform from the audience’s viewpoint.
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Behind the scenes of “The Phantom of the Opera”