prep time
BEFORE SHOWTIME Before the first scene of a Midland University performance is ever played out, there is a long list of behind the scenes work that must take place. Months and months of planning, dozens of performers and workers, and hundreds of hours of preparation and practice make everything click during a three-hour performance. It’s a process that staff, cast, and crew members embrace and it all begins a year in advance when Dan Hays, Director of Theater Activities, begins planning out what a performance list will look like. “We start looking a year ahead, applying for rights to shows, and starting to work with faculty on who will be involved,” Hays said. “You put a list of shows together, but quite often you can be denied permission to do that show, so then you have to refigure everything.” Hays said many factors come into play when choosing performances for a given year. “We try to find shows that
30 Midland Magazine
would be the right fit for the students we have at that time,” he said. “Some years we might have larger groups of males or females, so we have to plan for that. We also have to realize we only have so many resources to work with, so if we plan for a show that is expensive to perform, we need to counteract with a less expensive show.” Shows can range from traditional classics to new musicals. Hays says students aren’t afraid to offer up their opinions on which shows they would like to perform, but he also wants to be cognisant of the audience they are performing for. “Our demographic can be a bit unusual in that a lot are either 70 and older, or 20 and younger, so we try to find a nice mix,” he said. “We want to educate not only our students, but the populus in Fremont. In the old musicals, the plot was always boy meets girl, boy loses girl, then boy gets girl back and everyone ends up happy. The new musicals are not like that.”
