The Unseen Side of Community Theatre

It certainly takes a lot of work to put on a community theatre show, and most people never think about the behind the scenes effort that makes a show possible. At least, I never thought about it when I first got involved, through my kids, in community theatre.

Yes, the actors spend weeks rehearsing their roles, learning their lines and the songs and the dances involved - but that's just one piece of the puzzle. While they're doing that, others are helping to assemble the costumes the actors will wear. Some are rented, others are bought, and some are made especially for that particular show. Some shows have modest costume requirements, and others require complex, special costumes that reflect a specific era. It's a lot of work.

Then there are the props. Anything that appears on stage, from a coffee cup to pirate's sword, must be tracked down or, if necessary, constructed for the show. Some items are easy to find - others, not so much.

The running joke is, you know you're involved in community theatre when a piece of furniture from your house appears on stage. So far, I've loaned a big red chair to Schoolhouse Rocks Live and my kitchen table to Bye, Bye Birdie. My pal Jack Welch loaned his entire living room suite for A Christmas Story. Just about everyone who's involved in local theatre has a similar story (but it is odd to sit in the theater and see your furniture up there).

In my experience, there's always one prop that is the devil to track down - or almost impossible to build. But it always works out at the end (well, almost always).

The other piece of the puzzle, and the one that's probably the most difficult, is the set, which usually has to be built from scratch. This comes to mind because I spent four hours on Saturday helping with the construction of the huge set for the First Stage production of Peter Pan.

It's amazing how much work has been done in the last few weeks, and the credit goes to Jack Welch, Tim Beverage, Pat Mannis and a handful of other volunteers - but there's still a lot of work left to do. There are three major sets in the show - the children's bedroom, Pan's hideout and the pirate ship - and they all have to be constructed and painted and then, a week before the show, loaded into the theater at Huntington High School.

All these tasks have to be managed to bring a show together. It's a huge job, and one that requires the effort of all the directors, actors, parents and other volunteers to accomplish. The question that hangs over every show is: will they make it?

Stay tuned...