This year’s fall musical is going to be “Cinderella”, and the tech theater classes are currently working on preparing the sets, props, costumes and painting for the show before opening night on November 14.
The process of preparing for and selecting the musical starts a long time before the school year even begins. The musical needs to be chosen prior to when students and staff leave school in the spring, as the theater department must obtain rights to it, which happens over the summer.
Wendy Harms, Manitou Springs High School’s theater director, says that the ideas for the musical usually come from Abby Steen. “The first ideas of what our musical is going to be come from Ms. Steen,” Harms said, “because she is a musical director, and she knows the overview of voices that have potential to be in the musical, and kind of the pool of students we’re pulling from.”
After Steen has selected musicals, Harms will then step in and make choices based on many factors, including the other plays that are planned for the upcoming school year. “For instance, “Cinderella” is obviously a fairy tale,” Harms said, “so that means that the middle school play and the spring play will not be fairy tales.”
Another factor that is considered is the technical side of the musical. Harms says that if the musical or play requires a lot of technical work, the other plays throughout the school year will likely be less tech-heavy. “I can’t burn out my students and myself by doing all huge tech pieces in one year,” Harms said. “We try to balance the season for our resources. We try to balance the season for our finances. And we try to balance the season for our audience and for our students.”
The technical theater classes provide all of the technical support for the productions that are put on, which means they gather, build and create costumes. They do the sets, lights, props, makeup and all the stuff to get an actor on stage.“I think tech theater is important because I think theater is important,” Harms said. “I think theater, as a viewer, teaches us about ourselves and other people, so supporting that vision is important.”
Harms particularly loves tech theater because it involves real world job based skills. “We have an opportunity to do things and fail and fix them, which I think a lot of times is really hard to find in some of our classes,” Harms said. “We also work together as a group to come up with a vision, which I think is really important, and it’s a really important skill as students go out into college and workplace things. It teaches kids things like being on time, putting things out in a timely manner, and cleaning up after themselves, which are all things that future employers are going to want to see.”
Maya Scott, a senior in one of the tech theater classes, says that she sees a lot of value in the tech theater classes for MSHS students due to the hands-on learning of skills that can be applied to life outside of school and work. “Even if you aren’t interested in tech theater, it’s a lot of skills that you can continue using,” Scott said. “It also feels like a very approachable environment to learn those skills in.”
Every year the school has two tech theater classes that work on school productions. This year, Harms says she has noticed strengths in her classes, especially within her students’ thought processes and the making of the posters for “Cinderella”. “I think in this particular year’s group of students, we have a lot of different skill sets and we just have some really cool people in the class,” Harms said. “We have freshmen that we need to teach, and we’ve got the seniors who have done this before. For me, one of the really cool things is watching the seniors or the people who’ve taken the class before training the next group coming up.”
Scott has taken a role of leadership within the painting aspect of working on “Cinderella”. She feels that it is very cool to have a main focus within the class, especially after having already taken it her freshman year. “It’s cool to have gotten a chance to have a leadership role in making the musical,” Scott said. “I remember taking tech theater freshman year, and it was a really fulfilling class to me, because there were a lot of things that were inclined to my interest. And now I get to hone in on one thing and have other kids working with me.”
So far this year, the tech theater classes have done activities like creating posters for “Cinderella”, analyzing the script and brainstorming ideas based on the script. Harms says that she has loved the results of the posters, and that students are learning how to succeed in her classes. “There are people who rock and roll their way through it,” Harms said. “There were some people who had to learn some really hard lessons about time management, but we do that in this first project because then when we get to the second project, they’ll totally know what to do.”
As far as improvement goes, Harms would like students to come to class ready to work, and that she would love to see students prioritize time management and asking questions when needed. “We’re in the first semester, and so I don’t expect them to know that now,” Harms said. “They will learn that as we go. That’s going to be a thing that gets honed for them as we go through the class.”
Harms would describe her role in school productions as a project manager for the technical theater classes, due to her responsibilities managing many different components and projects all at once. She often pairs students together in groups to accomplish tasks during class time. Many students have opportunities to work on what they are passionate about and skilled at. “The important part of being a teacher is to look at a student and go: how can I offer them an opportunity to learn and grow in a medium either that they want to or that I see that there’s potential,” Harms said, “because those were the opportunities that were given to me and so I try to evaluate strengths.”
Before Harms was a school teacher, she was a professional stage manager. She applies many strengths and skills from that job to help her succeed with her classes here at MSHS. “We call that job the eye of the storm, because they’re dealing with the directors, designers and the technicians,” Harms said. “People who are good stage managers think really globally, but they have a real linear component, which are my skill sets.”
Harms plans out every day that her classes will be at the auditorium working on sets, costumes, props and painting. She preps every class with notes that list her priorities and what needs to be done. She makes an effort to make sure tasks are being completed timely and efficiently, however she will often take some work home with her in order to ensure her classes are running on a good timeline. “There are some things that I am just going to take home and get done,” Harms said, “because as much as I would let my students have the experience doing that, these things need to be done.”
So far the technical theater classes have accomplished a lot of work within the creation of the sets. Harms says that her classes are currently still working on brainstorming props and how to convey the magical components within the musical. While the classes brainstorm and create a lot themselves, they also use a lot of inspiration from other productions of “Cinderella”. “For me, a lot of it is pulling imagery on this show because this show has been done so much,” Harms said, “we borrow a lot on this one.”
Leah Williams, one of the seniors in technical theatre, says that she has enjoyed working on “Cinderella” so far, as she likes collaborating with others and seeing the process of creation. “I have really enjoyed being able to be a part of the play experience, and being a part of the team making it,” Williams said. “I think it’s really fun to see how everything goes together, and being able to see the final product.”
