This is the first time I am mentioning this on this blog, but I am a member of the Theater Crew at my school. This means that I do not act, but I help out with a lot of backstage work and building set pieces. This upcoming weekend will be the first theater production of this school year. The play? Little Women!
I am very excited for this weekend as it represents the culmination of literal months of work. This includes months of building platforms, hanging and adjusting flies, and painting. Oh there was so much painting. Most of all, we have an incredibly talented cast this year who really bring the show to life. Here’s a little more information about the show.
Little Women is a play based on the original book, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Louisa grew up in Concord Massachusetts, and was an inspiring novelist whose works have shaped modern American Literature as we know it. Part of the appeal to Little Women is how genuine the stories are. These stories are taken and adapted from Lousia’s own childhood which adds to the playful, endearing atmosphere the book exudes. The play is a very good adaptation of Little Women. Due to the length of the original work, a lot of original content was cut and rearranged. An example is that the play intersplices scenes of Jo’s time in New York with scenes of the march sisters’ childhood.
One critique I have about the play, and most adaptations is that they focus overwhelmingly on Jo’s perspective. While this was also true for the book, the original was much more balanced and gave much more emphasis to the other March sisters.
My own personal experience with Little Women is both long and deeply personal. I first read the original book in 7th grade after borrowing it from my school library. From that moment, Little Women has always been one of my favorite books of all time. I found the stories it had to tell about family and kinship extremely powerful and endearing. Afterwards, in 8th grade, I had the great fortune to be passing through Massachusetts (I usually live on the west coast) and was able to stop at Louisa May Alcott’s old home, which has now been converted to an incredible museum dedicated to her and her family. I remember even now how it struck me to see the location where so many scenes from the book lived. It was also in Concord that I was able to purchase, for the first time, my own volume of Little Women. This is now one of my prized possessions. Needless to say, I was extremely excited that Little Women was selected as my school’s fall show.
Being a member of Theater Crew isn’t all fun and games, however. It is a massive undertaking from all the students and faculty involved. In the ten or so days leading up to the show, all students spend two or three additional hours working on set rehearsing the show. On weekends, we stay in the theater the entire day for about ten hours. What do we do during this time? What is it exactly that the Theater Crew does?
In the months leading up to the show, Theater Crew is tasked with building the sets and props that the show will use. In the weeks leading up to the show, colloquially called ‘tech week’, we perform duties necessary for running the show such as managing props, controlling haze and fog machines, moving set pieces, doing sound, light programming, or spotlights. I personally am in charge of the flies which are important for scene changes. I am incredibly glad and proud to be a part of such a large production in spite of the amount of work it requires. Here’s to one more week of tech week and a great show on the weekend!a
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