Romeo and Juliet, Warrior Theatre’s fall production for the 2025-26 school year, was a huge success. It was actively worked on by over 30 people within the student body every day for over a month by both actors and tech workers alike. While most of what people see in a production of any kind is the performance on stage, there’s also a whole other world behind that stage that is crucial to a fantastic show. This is the world of theatre beyond show-nights.
From lights to sound and from props to green room, every single part of tech has an equally important role to play as the roles played on stage. No show would go half as smoothly without the commitment of those working any part of tech crew– it even stretches past the auditorium, as concessions are a part of the theatre experience for the audience and its proceeds make it back to Warrior Theatre for funding.
Imagine a show without proper lighting, or maybe a sound effect that didn’t go off at the right time– these are the small things that make a show effective. These seemingly unnoticeable things are taken for granted, and even the smallest of things take hours to perfect. Head stage manager and head of lighting for this show, junior Fiona Magdanz, was someone who was present every day, before, during, and after rehearsals and was one of the most committed people on tech during the entire process.
Responsibilities for tech vary greatly between areas. For Magdanz, she juggled two opposing, very demanding titles during the same show. “As a member of tech, you are held to the same standards as everyone else in the cast. You’re expected to show up on time and do your job obviously, but tech is also responsible for making sure everything behind the scenes runs smoothly,” Magdanz says, “This generally includes communicating with the actors to learn what they need from you, and how you can help make the show run as smoothly as possible. Tech is usually responsible for setting up before a show and staying after to clean up and prepare for the next day.”
While the makeup and costumes appear easy and natural onstage, in the green room, there’s a completely different environment. The green room is the place where actors go to get ready before a show for makeup and costumes and to idle between scenes. In a place where the show goes on in its own special way, it needs some regulation.
Head of green room, Junior Coco Richards, was in charge of delegating tasks and regulating specific jobs in that area to people. “I think one of the most important parts of being head of green room is that you have to be able to find a balance between being loud and assertive, because people wont listen to you if you don’t, but also being approachable and kind because if people have problems or are upset, you want them to to feel like they can talk to you,” RIchards said.
Prep for a major production doesn’t stop at tech crew. Actors have their own responsibilities to manage in order to perform the best they can. Things like memorizing, practicing, interpreting and more come into play when perfecting a part.
Junior JJ Kreiling, who played Romeo, encountered his fair share of unknowns in refining this lead role.
“The biggest unknowns were really how to get it memorized. If I have a set of lines, I can usually watch a scene on YouTube and then memorize the dialogue like that,” Kreiling said. “But, I was talking to one of our cast members, Jude, who plays Friar Lawrence, and– obviously this is English—but it’s old English, so you can’t stutter through a Shakespeare line because it’s not written in the same way that our dialect is, so that was also really a big one to get over.”
With such a vast, diverse group of students taking charge of a production, with every role, you’re bound to learn something new– even the director gains something from each production.
Theatre teacher Jeremy Stoll is also the director of the fall production each year and manages much more beyond the productions.
“We haven’t done a Shakespeare show since 2018 since The Twelfth Night, so I knew that actors weren’t going to have that sort of base knowledge of the language and how to pull the language out in a performance and make it understandable to an audience,” Stoll said. “Then, to make Shakespeare accessible and fun to watch for a modern audience, you kind of got to dress it up. So, we added choreography, we added fights, we added costumes and accents and set the entire thing in the 1920’s– all so that it was a more entertaining show.”
All of this goes to show the beyond-the-stage love that goes into just four show nights. Everyone participates and works hard to create a phenomenal show. While it’s performed for an audience, the process is entirely for the students who work to make it happen. If it weren’t for the love each person put into the process of rehearsing and repping the entire performance, the show would not have sparkled the way it did.
