Eugene weekly., January 04, 2007, Image 13

Bravo • Spring 2007
Caroline Barnes holds
the hands of a very
large puppet from
The Nutcracker
Smooth Sailing
How IATSE members hold the Hult together
BY SUZI STEFFEN
n Christmas Eve afternoon, as the
last production of the Eugene
Ballet Company’s The Nutcracker
ends at the Hult Center, stagehands swing
into motion. They know the set well;
they’ve worked on it for the past eight years,
but still — someone has to get the small ship
off the box for the balloon; someone has to
pack up the comforter and pillows from
Clara’s bed; someone must take apart the
clock and store it correctly. As other people
run around preparing parties, exchanging
gifts or spending quality time with new
Wiis, the members of IATSE Local 675
work into the evening to tear down the set.
And they’re coming back the next day.
“We haven’t had to work on Christmas
Day in a while,” Virginia Sands comments
in mid-afternoon on Dec. 25. She’s wield-
ing her adjustable wrench to unscrew one
of many C-clamped lights on a long metal
pipe (a bar) which has been lowered to the
O
deck (aka “stage floor,” for non-theatrical
types). She checks a piece of paper on a
music stand so she can move lights accord-
ing to the Eugene Opera’s “plot,” the light-
ing design for The Pirates of Penzance.
Near Sands, Ruth Atcherson and Janelle
Lesan move quickly and securely along
other pipes, taking off and setting down the
various light boxes with ease. Stage right,
in what an audience would see as the left
wing if an audience were ever able to see
the world of backstage, audio engineer
Jason Wells bawls out, “Right truss coming
down!” The truss is extra storage for lights,
and more “meat racks” of lights stand at the
ready upstage, near a storage area with a
taped IATSE logo.
Technically, it’s the IATSE, according to
the union’s website, and that stands for (deep
breath) the International Alliance of
Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture
Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the
United States, Its Territories and Canada.
Just in case that’s not clear: “We are cos-
tumers, hair and makeup artists, set builders,
painters, propmakers, lighting technicians,
sound engineers, riggers and flyrail opera-
tors,” says business agent Mike Carpenter.
Everything that’s done backstage at the
Hult, in other words. For instance, The
Nutcracker was on tour across Idaho until
just before it played at the Hult, and the tour-
ing version, with a smaller set, had to join its
larger sister set in Eugene. When the EBC’s
truck arrived, IATSE workers were ready to
haul in the Christmas tree, costumes, props
for the dancers and other important bits. And
they made sure the stage was safe for per-
formers. Longtime IATSE member Jim
Rusby noticed a frayed bit of rope on the bal-
loon and wrapped electrical tape around it so
no costumes would catch, no hands get rope
burn. “We make sure things are tied up and
taped down,” he said, as other stagehands
fed weighted metal pipes through the bottom
of the backdrops. “There’s a tendency for the
backdrops to blow towards the house,” John
Loomis explained. He winked and said, “We
call that the suck.” And no dancer wants to
be caught in the suck.
When some of the pipes ran too long for
the backdrop, Loomis and Carpenter and
Doug Beebe sighed and backed them out;
random pieces of metal sticking out in the
dark backstage area would be a disaster. Of
course, they’ve seen their share of disasters:
Ripped pants in the middle of a perform-
ance, fog machines gone crazy and all kinds
of other, er, experiences. Not that the audi-
ences would know that. “We tread lightly
and make a show flow seamlessly so that
you don’t notice anything but what a won-
derful performing arts experience you’re
having,” wrote Atcherson last September in
a handout for the IATSE booth at the
Eugene Celebration.
The Nutcracker comes off without
mishap. There’s always backstage drama, of
course. Caroline Barnes had to sew an ear
back on the dragon in the time between the
kids’ rehearsal, which takes place during
intermission, and the time the dragon had to
be back onstage about 20 minutes later.
Working with a flashlight and “trying not to
mess with the flow of what happens behind
the scenes,” she says, she managed to get it
fixed in time. Indeed, the watching children
and families never knew a thing about it.
“That can be sort of exhilarating!” she says.
Barnes remembers her trial by fire at the
Hult: After creating costumes for two of the
Hult’s “user groups,” she got her first call in
1992 when what she diplomatically will only
describe as “a rock band” was playing.
While loading in their equipment, the band’s
roadies ripped a hole in a huge black back-
drop. “I remember being in the corridor with
this industrial sewing machine and being
under the gun, like, they needed it hung yes-
terday,” she says. She kept pushing what
seemed like endless material through the
massive machine. And when it was finally
finished, she wondered if work would be like
that all of the time.
Answer? No, it’s not all adrenaline. A lot
of IATSE work involves preparation and
careful following of protocol; those things
above your head onstage are heavy. Most
stagehands have degrees in theater and
spend three years apprenticing at the Hult to
get to know the facility better. John Loomis
JANUARY 4, 2007 13