Engaged Stage Observation Report

For my field experience with a secondary high school production, I worked on the play Engaged and also briefly on Trojan Women, both from Maple Mountain High School with directors Bradley and Shawnda Moss. I was eager to begin, and I was asked to be a part of the stage crew. Before the stage crew was required to attend practice, I headed up some of the set work. During the first cast practices that I attended, I worked in the prop room painting panels that sat behind audience members. As this production was performed in a theatre-in-the-round, I carefully painted 5 of the 8 panels and waited for them to dry before later continuing to paint them with a rag. Bradley taught me how to take a piece of cloth, dip it in darker paint and roll it across the panel to create a texture on the panel. This technique

Some stage crew members decided to show up on some performance days and to ditch others, and it was very confusing as far as prop assignments. Also, there were times when I had two assignments during a scene change (move the set and bring in 2 chairs and a table) and I feel that the tech team could’ve benefited from a moment to stop and figure out which pieces to move when. There was immense confusion when no one moved the curtain for the set and someone else moved the table and chairs for me, so it was as if the assignments were null and void. If nothing else, this production experience has cemented in my mind the importance of a technical team. I never learned about technical elements in high school, and as a result, I had little respect for technical work and saw it as an insignificant part of theatre. In my future career, I’d like to teach at least one unit on technical design, allowing the students to explore its different facets and to help them view the theatre as much more than an acting