75 minutes before rehearsal, Assistant Stage Manager Michelle Riehle wrings out a mop in a yellow janitorial bucket. She begins vigorously scrubbing every square inch of the rectangular stage floor. The safety of the actors depends on her accuracy − nobody wants a pair of bare feet to slip on some dust during the show. The dimly lit theater makes it difficult for Riehle to know if she's missed a spot, but from the balcony, it's easy to see her precision. Stage Director Jonathan Michaelson and Orchestra Conductor Corey Jamason stand by discussing the rehearsal that will carry on for the next four hours. As they go over last minute changes in the music, the orchestra slowly takes their places and tunes their instruments. With the floor cleaned and the musicians seated, the show is ready to begin.
Before every show -- before the stage lights flicker, before the orchestra warms up and before actors get into costume -- Stage Manager JoJo Percy, an outspoken IU grad student with years of experience under her belt, unlocks all the doors to the theater. On the night of the final dress rehearsal, she helps set up props and gets the actors and actresses to their places for the Bloomington Early Music Festival Opera , a presentation of Monteverdi's "Orfeo."\nIn the week before the show, which is known as "tech week," Percy says she worked a minimum of 24 hours, not including extra rehearsals. During tech week, the actors and orchestra have long rehearsals, the light crew puts the finishing touches on the set and the entire show comes together.\n"Tech week is obviously the most stressful point," Riehle says. "You're hearing things from a lot of angles, and the show gets a little boring because you've been doing it for over a month."
"Twenty minutes to the top of act one. Twenty minutes to the top of act one," Percy whispers into her headset as the lighting crew checks bulbs, the orchestra tunes up and the actors enter makeup. Percy's crew, which range from light coordinators and costume designers to a personal assistant, wear black shirts, black pants, black socks and black shoes to remain invisible to audience members. In the dark theater, with its black stage and dark purple railing, it's hard enough to see the unlit actors, let alone Percy and her crew.\nWith the show about to begin, Percy says into her headset, "House to half, go. Lights, go." The lights in the audience dim to a dull yellow tone, and the onstage lights begin getting brighter. The crew struggles to interpret the performance, which is entirely in Italian, in order to try and keep pace. Percy stumbles through the cues with as much accuracy as her minimal musical knowledge and foreign language proficiency allow, but accepts that she is bound to make mistakes − albeit, not many.
Since the audience never sees Percy and her staff, their work often goes unrecognized. However, without Percy and her team, the show would not go on.\nDuring performances and rehearsals, the crew is on headsets to communicate with each other. Percy calls cues for all lights and special effects and directs her assitant, Riehle, as to when to cue actors' entrances and move props.\nAltogether, Percy is responsible for 104 light cues during "Orfeo." \n"It's about feeling when everything is supposed to happen and how everything is supposed to flow," Percy says.\nEach member of Percy's team sports a headset just like hers. These are, perhaps, the most important props in the show.\n"It's really about communication so that everyone knows what's going on," Percy says. "The stage manager is really in charge of making sure that every aspect that goes on in a production is really in sync with each other."
Truly behind the scenes, in the far reaches of the theater's dressing area, sits Wardrobe Supervisor Hannah Moss, the only backstage crew member that remains 100 percent unseen by the audience. She passes the time during the acts reading and studying under the heat of the dressing room bulbs that reflect sun-like rays from the mirrors that cover the walls. Blaring from the speakers are the sounds of the onstage action, so that Moss can follow along and await her cue to ready actors' wardrobes and begin preparing stage makeup for intermission.\nAnd then the cue comes.\n15 minutes is all the crew has to paint faces, change wardrobes, swap props, revamp the set and adjust the lights. In the dressing room, echoes of opera music can be heard from the hallways. Moss repaints the faces of four actors in record time, while Riehle rushes around the stage, completely unseen by the audience, adjusting prop placements, getting actors ready to re-enter the stage and making any last second changes. Percy directs it all on the headset.
Moss says she has been involved in nearly every production by the theater school since her freshman year at IU. The fast pace is of minimal challenge to her backstage, as she is used to such a hectic schedule. \n"I'm kind of a crazy person and decided to graduate undergrad in three years," she says. "I graduate, turn twenty-one and get married all within a week."\nThis is the first time the theater school and the music school have come together for a production, and Percy says that staffing for the show occurred at the last minute. For a usual production, the crew is larger, with more people to assist Percy and Moss. \n"My job is to take what (the designer) created and make it happen and make it happen everyday," Moss says. "The hardest part is that there are fourteen of them and one of me."\nWhile some would be stressed to perform such a daunting task in so little time, with such little assistance, Riehle finds it entertaining.\n"It's like a race or a game that I've got to get everything out during the time limits," Riehle says. "It's sort of fun."
After the rush of intermission, when all actors are fully costumed, painted and in their places, Moss sits back under her glowing lights and settles down to read a book. After her hefty intermission work has concluded, she must wait until the end of the show, at which point the actors will strip off their clothes and place them in a basket so that Moss can rush everything to the laundry. The clothes will be washed, dried and hung up, so that tomorrow it can all happen again.
