Meet the Staff: 2015-16 Apprentices

It’s a big task to put on seven plays a year, so each year we supplement our small full-time staff with… The Apprentices!

They’re our lineup of four fabulous young theatre professionals, fresh out of some of the country’s top college theatre programs, who work in the artistic and production departments at MRT for one year. This year, we’re privileged to have with us:

2015-16 MRT Apprentices building a snowmanHayley Hunt and Alexis Garcia, Stage Management/Company Management
Hayley and Alexis—who both hail from Houston, Texas—are MRT’s company management /stage management apprentices.

Both have their roots in stage managing, and as assistant stage manager for each production, either Hayley or Alexis stays backstage on a headset at each show, serving as Stage Manager Casey Hagwood’s eyes, ears, and hands while she’s back in the booth.

“In some weird way, its fun when something goes wrong,” Hayley reflects. That might seem strange, but the idea that anything could happen in a performance makes live theatre unique. Jumping in during a show to, say, fix a player piano, keeps things exciting. (Hayley’s also a licensed pilot, so her standards for “fun” might be different from yours.)

Alexis discovered her love of theatre early on, when after starting middle school acting classes, she quickly found that she’d “rather flip the three stage light switches we had” than do anything else. She’d stay ‘til midnight building sets on her own steam, so when she was offered a full scholarship in stage managing it, it was a no-brainer.

They both have loads of Texas pride. And though they’re quick to remind you that the Houston metro area is the same size as our entire state… they sure do seem to be having fun building that snowman. (It was the first snow Alexis had ever seen.)

Melissa Ziccardi, Wardrobe Apprentice
Every garment worn onstage passes through the hands of Melissa Ziccardi—not just once, but before and after every show.

As wardrobe apprentice, Melissa is responsible for making sure the cast looks fabulous every time they go onstage. That means helping with fittings, making alterations, setting up the dressing rooms, and doing tons and tons of laundry. It also means helping with quick changes when they’re needed (she remembers fondly back to a production of Legally Blonde where she had to do a quick change on top of a moving set piece.)

But Melissa’s favorite task is sewing costumes from scratch. “Everything I get a chance to build for a show is special to me… I like helping create a world where people can get lost for a few hours.” Her handiwork for our stage includes the lovely green skirt worn by Celeste Oliva in It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, and thanks to her exquisite craftsmanship, we were all able to get lost in 1946 for a few hours.

Melissa grew up a bit closer than the rest of the apprentices (Connecticut). She’s a graduate of the costume design program at Florida Southern College, and comes to us with work experience at Virginia’s Shenandoah Summer Music Theatre.

Adam Neely, Lighting and Sound Apprentice
It takes someone like Adam to make sure you can actually see what happens onstage.

“It’s great, because as soon as the lights come on, I can say, ‘Hey! I did that.’”

Literally. Adam mans the lighting and sound board for all of the performances. He’s also responsible for the pre-show check of every single lighting instrument, before every single performance, by turning each one on and off individually. He’s even got an app on his phone that lets him control the lights while standing on the stage, which is helpful; for The White Chip, we’ve got about 150 lights; with 27 performances, that’s over four thousand checks!

But just getting to the point where the lights are ready to go on takes time. Adam’s supervisor Carter Miller (who himself began as an MRT apprentice) gets a lighting plot from the designer; Carter and Adam then go through the plot together, figuring out exactly which light will go where. Then Adam climbs up into the grid (the web of planks and poles above the seats and stage), marking the location for each light with a sticker. Only after that’s complete can the lights actually get hung. The whole ordeal takes about a week.

Adam started theatre in high school in Nebraska, moving from set carpentry to lighting, and eventually becoming master electrician—one of several  roles he could end up in professionally after moving on from MRT this spring.

For all four, the apprenticeship can be a bridge into full-time work in the field. But the service they do for us is just as invaluable.

The Apprentice Program at MRT is funded in part by support from Kronos, Inc.

 

Pictured above left to right: Alexis Garcia, Melissa Ziccardi, Adam Neely, Hayley Hunt.