“Tech is love, tech is life,” says Avree Linne, one of the many members working behind the scenes on the fall play, Our Town. Our Town is showing in the PAC November 12-14, and students in the theatre department have stayed until late in the night for the past week and a half in preparation for it. Fossil students will see and know the actors on stage, but most of the details the students do not notice is the work put in by the lights, sound, set, costume and makeup crews. Linne is on the sound crew, but one of the people she looks up to the most is Laura Van Lieu.
Van Lieu, a sophomore, started with the Drama department her freshman year, and is now the lead of the lights crew. “Laura is my queen of theatre,” Greenely Slater states. As a freshman, she controlled a spotlight during Harvey, and ran the light board for Honk. To get the position of lead, Van Lieu went through an interview process with the directors of the show. By taking on this responsibility, she has really stepped up and shown people what she can do. Most of the tech crewmembers last year were seniors, and many this year have roles in the play, so underclassmen have many leadership positions.
Her main job this year is to teach the rest of her crew, which consists of Max Fink, Emily Hevelone, Abby Meyer, Betsy Pruznick, and Nic Rhodes, how to control the lights for the play. The jobs consist of moving the spotlights to follow the actors, controlling the lights on the actual stage, and changing the colors of the lights. Betsy Pruznick is new to the theatre department this year, and she says, “Laura has taught me a lot about how to hang lights, use the light board, and change gels.” She can also tell that Laura really loves what she does.
The lights crew this year is bigger than a typical crew for a smaller scale play is, and Van Lieu’s role during the play is damage control. “My job is to basically fix anything that goes wrong as fast as possible without anyone in the audience noticing,” Van Lieu says. Everyone on her crew works hard to get things right, and the members of tech crew would love to see support for all of their work on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night. Tickets for Our Town are $8 for students, $10 for adults, and the play starts at 7 p.m. each night.
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