Behind every play and the actors on stage are a group hidden from the audience. Out of sight, and out of the mind of the audience, are the silent workers; the technical hands of any show in the theatrical world. Before the play even takes place, before even the actors are chosen, a crew of workers is constantly on their toes, preparing to put on a show for an audience just as much as the actors are.

“I’ve never really been involved in something as serious as this before, and I especially didn’t think that by signing up to work on the Rouse theatre crew, that I’d have to be starting so soon,” junior Ashton Rust said. “I expected to at least start around the same time as the theatre students when we started preparing for Big Love, but I was surprised when we started so soon.”

The theatre department recently performed in their fall show Big Love, and while most of the actors started getting serious about the play in mid-September, the tech crew was hard at work in early-August, working from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. every Tuesday and Thursday after school.

“Now that the plays over, when I look back on everything that we got done, I am glad that we started so soon,” Rust said. “At times, it felt a little overwhelming, but if we hadn’t started when we did, I doubt there would have been a show.”

Working just as hard as the tech crew, the Technical classes above Tech II also managed to get their hands dirty during their class, getting a lot of building, construction and setting up done.

“I was a bit disappointed that I wasn’t able to make time to help on the crew,” junior Cody Coffey said. “But with everything that we got done in class, I felt much better knowing that I contributed almost as much.”

While the Technical Theatre classes were busy building inside of the shop located next to the auditorium, the Technical crew mostly found themselves inside of the auditorium itself, hanging lights from the catwalk, creating lighting and sound cues at computers and working together in order to make sure once the show started everything would look nice and clean.

“Sure, we don’t get to help set up the actual lighting and sound,” Coffey said. “But there’s always next time, and anyways, some people even prefer just building to setting up everything.”

Not only does the crew set up for everything ‘technical’ for a play, they’re also divided up into smaller groups: sound engineering, light engineering, costume and makeup and all other skills that can be carried outside of high school and not only have to apply to theatre itself.

“I actually want to work in the field of Audio Engineering once I leave school,” sound tech and senior Jonathan Garcia said. “So being given the opportunity to work on those skills here in the theatre department really helps.”

Not only does the crew teach the students about being able to juggle their time outside of school but they also have to be proficient in what they do, making sure while everything needs to be as good as it can be, it also needs to be done as quickly as possible.

“You really do learn a lot from working on the crew, even if you’re not a part of Technical Theatre of the theatre department,” Rust said. “Working on the crew was really fun the first time, hearing the applauding audience at the end of every show and knowing that you were the cause of that applaud, even if you weren’t on stage. I’d recommend that anyone with the time on their hands and the drive to work give it a shot.”