Many roles and people work behind the scenes to set the stage for a theater performance. Many of these roles can be overlooked, however, they are a vital part of the production. Without these people, the play would be without costumes, props, a set and more. 

One commonly unnoticed role is the set head. For the upcoming play, “The Outsiders,” this role is shared between Madison Helman and Nathan Shultz. During this show, Helman is in charge of designing the set. 

“I like color and painting and designing what [the set] will be in the finale,” Helman said. “Seeing the finished product and guiding the group of people to get the finished product is my favorite thing.” 

Both Helman and Shultz are in charge of the set crew, the group of people who build the set in a play. Their job is to organize the crew and assign members to specific roles. 

“We have a lot of stuff to get done, and being in charge of that, I think it has a lot of responsibility attached,” Helman said. 

 Strict deadlines can make their role stressful, and it can be challenging to keep everyone on task. 

“It’s the end of the day,” Shultz said. “Everyone’s timed out. They’ve been at school for at least seven hours. It’s hard to wrangle everybody back up and get them to lock in on building.” 

Shultz doesn’t like to confront people who aren’t on task, but sometimes he has to.

“I don’t like yelling at people,” Shultz said. “I try to be the good cop in the “good cop, bad cop” situation because I don’t do yelling, I don’t do confrontation. I want to have a good relationship with all of these people.”

In the same sense, the audience may also look past the importance of the set head.  This year at North, sophomore Bella Buchanan is the costume designer. Buchanan is in charge of everything from making sure that actors have costumes to finding a place to store and organize costumes.

“The actors wouldn’t have clothes without us,” Buchanan said. 

Another important aspect of Buchanan’s role is timing.

“We also get the actors there on time,” Buchanan said. “We work with the actors the most out of everyone, besides sound and props, because we’re helping [actors] change.”

With most of the head tech students being juniors and seniors, Buchanan’s age leads to added challenges. 

“I’m young for this,” Buchanan said. “I’m inexperienced a little with that. I’ve never had a leadership role.”

Buchanan also thinks that with her age comes added pressure. 

“[The theater teacher] believes in me a lot, which I’m so thankful for, but she has higher expectations,” Buchanan said. “It can be very overwhelming.”

There are more jobs behind the scenes in theater productions like sound crew, light crew and prop crew. It can be easy to underestimate their value and importance. However, these roles are crucial to ensuring an on-time performance for one of the most important aspects of school.

“[Tech crew] is really important for building teamwork and learning how to work in a group,” Helman said.