McNary puts on numerous amount of plays and musicals year-round. Actors may be the stars shown on stage, but the show would only be able to happen with the people behind the curtains. Technicians are the students who make the lights shine on the main character or the ones who make the planned set fall down.  

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Every year they offer a class to learn the ways of being a tech as well as helping make sets for the next big production of the year. These students learn how to attend to each call and make sure all the actors are set and ready for the show. Staying there and fixing quickly what happened on stage as well.

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They get to help make the smaller props shown around the show. The paintings in the Play That Goes Wrong were all hand-painted by one of the technicians of the show. The sets are hand-crafted by students in the tech class and designed by them as well. 

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“My favorite is the single painting that doesn't fall. Finn (Tech) painted that and named it. Just knowing that all the paintings are student-made is really cool,” Junior Jasmine Miller said, stage hand for the Play That Goes Wrong.

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The play that Goes Wrong and Mamma Mia are the first shows to start off the school year. In the Play That Goes Wrong, they have to be ready and hands-on. This is a play that the Techs got to be on stage and have a fun performance beforehand. They had lots of lights to manipulate, sets to be dropped in time, and props to be in the correct spot.

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“Everything you see that goes wrong is planned out by the techs,” Miller said.

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In Mamma Mia the techs and stage managers don't have their hands as full with this show as they don't have to constantly move sets. They have a limited number of techs for this show, so the techs will have to be all around. 

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“We are everything the audience doesn't see. We make sure lights are going off and on, the actors are in the right spot, help make the sets go in the right place. We just make sure everything goes according to plan,” 11th grader Norah Laroche, stage manager for Mamma Mia.

Every show has a tech week and this is the time for the techs to learn their parts. In this week they go through where they need to be and who they have to help. In the previous weeks, they weren't there as much. So they have a week to learn their roles behind the scenes. These positions don't take a lot of time to train for as they just get told what they need to do when they show up.

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Techs learn a lot from each production they are in. Time management is a huge part of what they learn as there is limited time for them to be on stage and set up the next scene. 

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“Time Management because I never really knew what goes on behind the scenes. So much chaos. I've learned five seconds is a lot longer when you are waiting on it, ” Laroche said.

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