Musical Program Structure & Team

From preparing for auditions to packing away the last costume piece, running a school musical is a team effort. All educators involved have the same goal, and that is to nurture the creativity and confidence of every student involved in the production.

A theater program is a safe place where students will find their voices, explore their ideas, develop friendships, uncover passions, strengthen life skills like dedication and responsibility, and end up with an overwhelming sense of pride for a job well done.

Being a part of the musical is finding a home and a purpose within the school community.

Production Team:

This team of teachers and volunteers takes responsibility for securing rights to a show, ordering scripts, managing all finances, creating, printing, and selling tickets, ordering t- shirts, creating and printing the playbill, publicizing, and organizing and stocking show- day concessions.

Directing Team:

This team of teachers and volunteers works directly with the cast of the show. As the artistic director, I establish a rehearsal plan and publish weekly schedules, plan for and run rehearsals, and establish blocking, dance routines, and vocal arrangements. With the help of a vocal coach and choreographer, we work with the kids on concepts like physical and comedic acting, creating a character, staying in character, dynamic and static characters, responsive and improvisational acting, stage combat, singing techniques, and expressive dancing.

We are systematic in our approach to learning the show. First, we establish everyone’s character, even those students who are in the singing or dancing choruses. We learn how to speak, move, and make facial expressions as our character. We also create and learn a line dance to a popular song as a full cast and begin every rehearsal by doing that dance as a team-building and focusing activity.

When it’s time to start rehearsals, we begin at the top of the show and follow this (or a similar) pattern: On Monday we learn all of the vocals in a scene. On Tuesday we learn all of the dances in a scene, and on Wednesday we learn the blocking for that scene. On Thursday, we run the new scene we’ve learned, and on Friday, we run as much of the show as we’ve learned. Our drama club maintains a webpage that supplies students with rehearsal tracks, videos of the choreography, rehearsal objectives, and other announcements so that our kids can practice at home as well.

Tech-Team:

The tech team is a team of adults responsible for turning our middle school stage into a professional theater. We hire a company to bring in several rigs of stage lighting (usually around 12-16 Mac 250 wash lights and 9 Mac 101 beam lights with diffusion filters) and to design lighting and sound cues for the production. On the Allen and Heath GLD80 we run up to 20 channels of ULXD with the help of PGX for extra support.

It’s important to us that our audience can clearly see and hear our performers, and that the lighting and sound contribute to the tone and meaning of each scene. Final touches also come from the tech team. In the past, we have used special effects including low-lying dry ice foggers and cryo jets as well as projection mapping.

Cast:

In early December, our directing team holds auditions for the musical. We ask students to sign up for a time slot on the website, SignUp Genius. We also provide students with a packet and website (Canvas page) that fully explain the program, audition process, and all music and monologues students need to prepare. They are to come prepared with a scene and two vocal selections from the show.

At the audition, we also teach a short dance which is usually two eight-counts. We host audition dance workshops for two weeks prior to auditions to help students prepare.

As a part of their audition, students share why they want to be a part of the production.

We offer three nights of auditions and one night of callbacks. Then, the directing team uses a sorting system to cast the show. Whenever possible, we do not cut any students. To accomplish this, I have double cast twice.

Crew:

About two-thirds of the way into the production process, we ask for crew applications. Our crew is comprised of several teachers, parent volunteers and students, and is broken into several subgroups. Teams include sets, props, tech, costumes, hair and make-up, concessions, and publicity.

Crew teams come together to do any major painting projects and some smaller set/prop projects, depending on the show. For example, during Peter Pan, they designed and painted Hook's ship.

Using a task assignment system, crew members learn how to clear and set the stage between each scene. During each tech rehearsal and performance, these students handle all props, set and costume changes, mic changes, and they run the spotlights.

Community and Parent Volunteers:

Well, even with all of the support we receive from the students and teachers at school, we would not be able to offer students a theater program without help from our families and community volunteers. At Lundahl and Beardsley each year, we had up to ten parent committees helping to supervise rehearsals and crew meetings, sewing costumes, collecting and making props, lending us trucks to pick up rented set pieces, building set pieces, painting, doing character stage make-up (we had a mom airbrush Ross, our genie and turn Brian into the cowardly lion,) and soliciting ads for our program. We have also been fortunate that several local businesses have supported our program by offering donations and providing coupons and ads for our program.

Parents also decorate the hallway each year to help build excitement and celebrate the production.