When the curtains open, what do people really see?

Usually the first things people notice are the set, props, costumes, and the acting within the first few lines. These things could make or break any show.

Three times a year the Monte Vista Drama program puts on a show, and the first one of this school year, “The Whole Darn Sooting Match” has just concluded. Both play-pro, the actors, and stagecrafts, the technical designers worked extremely hard for their fall play.

“We are here for rehearsals every single day from about 3 to 5:30,” Senior Allison Sherer said. “I have put my whole life into this show for the last few months, we are all so proud of it.”

The play lasted a little bit over 2 hours, but that is nothing compared to the amount of time was put into preparing for the show.

Drama is unique in the sense it gets to create its own world on stage. Every night each actor has to transform into a completely different person, unlike themselves.

In “The Whole Darn Shooting Match,” the member of play pro had to transform into the quirky members of an advertising department. This play included some crazy antics, and eccentric characters.

“In the show we had a really big acting challenge.” Junior Katie Linn said. “We all had to play characters unlike ourselves, but they all ended up being funny, and making people laugh!”

All of the actors put in countless hours before opening night, and so does stagecrafts, the technical designers.

Theatre production is a student run production, meaning everything the audience sees on stage was done by students.

When the curtains open and the lights go up, people don’t realize how much time has been spent of the stage by stagecrafts. There are hours spent researching the time period, designing the set and lights, making the costumes, and rehearsing every scene countless amount of times.

Evan Rowe, the designer and one of the builders of the set has spent many hours at Monte Vista over the past few weeks.

“When people see the play they do not see how much work we put into it.” Senior Evan Rowe said. “Not many people realize that we have spent probably 30 hours in the theatre correcting everything on the stage to make it perfect for opening night.”

Students like Evan Rowe are in charge of making sure this little world could be put into the 1960s, the time period of the show, at any time and make sense.

“My favorite part about the show was getting to chose advertising to fill the walls of the advertising room.” Sophomore Arya Lall said. “We spent about 4 hours looking at different websites trying to find the perfect 1960s advertising that could fit into this extremely outlandish design room.”

“The Whole Darn Shooting Match” was a very impressive first show, but it seems even more impressive when the time is taken to think about how much work went into the show previously.