The cast of a musical has a set amount of time to learn their lines and music in order to put on a good performance. Opening night they go out on stage and the audience watches the results of the months of preparation. What a lot of people don’t think about is that they are also seeing the end result of the crew and the people responsible for putting the set together.

For HHS musicals, the backstage work is done by students. They are in charge of working the technical aspects, playing the music, and being backstage during performances in order to move the set around. Building the set, however, is the job of many; brothers and dads, students and teachers pick up their tools and get together to build the set.

“What [we] try to do is try to take the vision of what [Paul] Warne has, or Stan [Swartz] and try to make it happen,” assistant director for set construction Ethan Zook said.

Zook is part of the group of men who come together to build the set for the musicals including the one for this year, Les Miserables. During college, he had some experience with construction and now enjoys helping during musicals putting the backgrounds together.While some of the other men put together the basic structures, Zook takes care of fixing the smaller aspects.

“I enjoy using my construction skills and problem solving and figuring out how to get things done,” Zook said. “[I like] figuring out the problems in terms of how things have to be fixed so that it does what they want it to do.”

Years ago, Zook had his first musical experience in Bye Bye Birdy, singing during the bar scene. He enjoyed working with the other students, their parents, the music and band director as well as Swartz, and decided to become a part of the backstage crew ever since.

Alumni Zachary Skiba and his father Chris Skiba became involved in set construction in a similar way. Five years ago, Zachary got into set building during Beauty and the Beast, when his mother and sister Sam became involved with musical.

“I’ve never been one who liked being onstage in front of people, so [set building] was the next best thing for helping out and being with the people.” Zachary said.

Similarly, his dad also joined at the same time.

“I started with Seussical, when our oldest daughter was a senior back in 06,” Chris said. “So I’ve worked on set construction for every set except for I missed Oliver, so it’s quite a few years of doing it. Each year it’s a little interesting. It’s fun to be part of what goes on behind the scenes and things like that.”

JMU math professor Paul Warne became involved with set construction due to family members. Warne’s daughter, Junior Kaelyn Warne, has been acting in the theater department since she was a freshman. This year, she is  Madam Thenardier. Warne designed the set for Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, How to Succede in Business With Out Really Trying, and this year’s Les Miserables. Every year in mid-December, he meets with Swartz and the two talk about their creative vision for the show. Warne sketches out his set ideas and runs them by Swartz. Warne, however, is modest about his role.

“I just help, I’m a dad. I’m Kaelyn’s dad and I just help Stan put together the wonderful shows that he does. Most of the dads that you see here have been involved in almost all of these productions or at least some part of them. It’s really a group of dads, all of us working together helping Stan and Ethan with their vision. Pull off whatever they want to do.” Warne said.

The first step in developing the set is deciding what the background will look like. For Les Mis, the set has to portray 19th century France.

“[Warne] has a book full of pictures during that time 1815 to about 1840,” Zook said. “There’s all kinds of pictures and ideas and maybe looks at the show elsewhere or has seen the show elsewhere. Stan Swartz does the same thing and so they take those pictures and then decide how to [make the set].”

From there the real building comes into play. The voulenteers construct flats, which are parts of scenery that are made to look like something, but are actually something else.

“It’s like a giant canvas,” Zachary said. “There are these backgrounds that have walls and you can paint whatever kind of scenery you want on them.”

After the construction comes the detail work. Foam blocks that look like stones are added to flat surfaces, brick work is painted on. The scenery starts to come alive, which is a fulfilling feeling for volunteers and designers alike.

“[We] have absolutely nothing [when we start]. And then after a couple months it takes to pull it together [we] step back, like [wow] we put that all together,” Zachary said. “[We] see all the little things. With How to Succeed, all the skyscrapers and stuff people thought were amazing, but behind them there’s nothing, just a bunch of supports drilled into the floor to keep it up.”

Time is one of the biggest difficulties the builders face while trying to get the set finished.

“We’re always facing this opening date, and then changes and there’s always budget constraints, trying to not break the bank and stuff like that.” Warne said.

Despite the drawbacks, all the members of set construction enjoy the process of building the set for various reasons.

Warne has helped out with various productions both at the high school and at Thomas Harrison Middle School. Overall, his favorite aspect aside from working with the kids is working with his own friends.

“My favorite part is the community of guys. There’s all these dads and we don’t get together very much be we’ll come together for something like this and try to do stuff that’s fun and visually pleasing and hopefully safe,” Warne said. “But it’s just fun getting to interact with everybody.”

The past months of preparation are about to be showcased later this week, with opening night of Les Mis this Wednesday. Tickets are also available for the performances Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

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