Before the lights of a stage even illuminate to present a successful show full of sound, action and drama, detailed, arduous work behind the scenes must be done. The preparation behind Aliso Niguel Theater Company’s new play, Metamorphoses, is no different, as students from every department work hard behind the scenes to put the play together.
Written by Mary Zimmerman in 1996, Metamorphoses is a play based on the Roman poet Ovid’s poem. It depicts vignettes of several Greek and Roman myths with the additional twist of setting some of the stories in ancient or modern times. The contrast influenced many of the decisions made for the play.
The play was chosen by Mr. Golden, the executive director and teacher of the theater program. The current group of actors, the difficulty of the play, the fun of the story and the lack of main roles in the play casting swayed Mr. Golden to make his decision.
Mr. Golden said, “I chose [this play] because of the nature of it, but I also chose it because there were a lot of challenges.”
Since the play was purchased under a contract to keep its integrity, the play has not been modified, and all lines and stories were kept the same.
Metamorphoses handles more dark and disturbing themes, so every story had to be approached with caution to ensure an appropriate depiction for a school environment while staying true to Zimmerman’s intentions.
The infamous pool of water in the center of the stage has also been kept in the play.
Other theaters sometimes replace the water with other props to avoid the hassle of managing a pool of water, but Mr. Golden said, “You lose a lot by not having the water. It is the transformational element. Metamorphoses is all about transformation, so … to take [water] out of it or to even just suggest it, sure, it makes everything drier and a lot of this easier, but you lose something really big.”
Many technical issues arose from the unpredictable and uncontrollable nature of water: the set crew had to develop a stage that would mitigate water spills and redirect spilt water back into the pool; actors also needed to be kept warm as the water was extremely cold; make up and hair designers as well as costumes designers had to create looks that were compatible with the chlorinated water; and the sound crew had to install specially placed microphones to avoid short circuiting them.
Although the play has kept true to its source material, things omitted in the script have been filled by student creativity, something Mr. Golden and his two assistant directors help manage.
Music is one of the omitted elements in the scripts, although it indicates when the music should play. In the light of this opportunity, two musical composers, Freya Harrison (12) and Benita Alirezaei (10), stepped up and created an original soundtrack for the production. Music director Claire Fincher (12) also assisted in the integration of this music into the show.
Using applications like Logic Pro and Garage Band, as well as real instruments, the two music composers collaborated to create a large majority of the music used in the production.
Alirezaei explained the inspiration behind the music, saying, “For some of the parts of the play, … it’s a very modern story, like Phaeton’s one, … so we [composed] pretty modern music for that one. But for some of the other ones that are very old-timey, we [composed] classical [style music].”
Alirezaei also expressed that her musical background in Persian instruments and music theory served as inspiration as well.
Composing original music is not a common occurrence for Aliso Niguel’s Theater Company, yet with the right circumstances of needing music and having two adept musicians in the class, more originality was able to be included in the play.
Other teams help shape the play too: the lights crew also helps with story telling by designing visually appealing and practical lights for the play; the house crew creates billboards and help welcome guests coming in to watch the show; the marketing team works to bring more audience members; the back stage crew enable the show to run smoothly by managing set movement, calling out cues (this show had approximately 270 cues for actors, lights, sounds, etc) and mopping the water spilled by the pool.
