Many who saw the most recent school play, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, were left in awe at the fast pace hilarious acting, seamless scene changes, and colorful sets, but did you ever wonder the time, effort, and practice that was put in months before the production was ever presented to a crowd? The play’s director and drama teacher, Kelli McNeven, gave some insight as to how much she does to make the play a success.

“I tell the actors where they should be on stage and when they should be there. I design the overall look of the show, including the sets, the costumes, the makeup, the lighting, and the sound. I also have made some parts of costumes, I do makeup on people, I pretty much do everything,” McNeven said.

With all these things to get done, the months leading up to the play are busy making perfect sets and preparing everything.

“We have worked on the set for this show for five Saturdays, most of those being six hours a day,” Said McNeven. “We have had rehearsal for the last six weeks, pretty much on average Tuesdays through Fridays from 4:00 to 5:30. The last two weeks we’ve gone from Monday through Friday and this week [week of the play] we’ve been there from 4:00 until about 9:00 every night,”

It’s not just McNeven that does all the behind the scenes work, a group of students sign up to help the process along.

“Backstage we’ve got 5 crew members backstage and then we’ve got a couple up in the booth one for lights and one for sound, and sometimes the actors have to help out with scene changes,” McNeven said.

The crew has a fast pace, complicated job that could cause a problem on stage if they don’t do it right every time.

“Curtains, moving scenery, there are ten scene changes in this show, so basically a scene change for almost every scene and so their just constantly moving props and set pieces on and off stage and making sure they go where they need to go,” McNeven said.

With all the stressful and time consuming work they do, why would anyone want to work backstage?

“You get to make more friends and make a lot of memories backstage. Really you get to see the characters as their true self,” Backstage crew member, Caitlyn Molloy said.