Buy your Big Fish Musical Tickets: https://www.onthestage.tickets/st-johns-school Courtesy of Johnnycake

When students watch Dayton Voorhees prepare to be launched from an 8-foot tall multicolored cannon in the upcoming musical, Big Fish, they might find it difficult to believe that the production began in a two-dimensional script. 

For each spring musical, director Jamie Stires-Hardin, choreographer Victoria Arizpe and conductor Scott Bonasso spend months transforming words into real dances, songs and scenes. Yet Theater Manager Thomas Murphy is met with a unique challenge: raising an entire world from the ground up. 

As the set designer, Murphy watches his sketches and blueprints spring to life, spanning the Lowe Theater stage and crowding the fly loft. In just the past year, the auditorium transformed from Shakespearean England to Sherwood Forest to the Delta Nu sorority house.

While most of Hardin, Bonasso and Arizpe’s work involves directing the cast, Murphy exclusively works behind the scenes. He designs each set with references gathered from history, art, music and dramaturgy—the study of dramatic composition. 

Murphy’s work is driven by connection—he finds inspiration from what he can relate to and tries to immerse the audience in that world, leaving no stone unturned. 

“I was even trying to calculate how much modern-day money the prize for Sherwood’s archery contest was,” Murphy said. “It turns out it was kind of impossible to calculate, but I got a ballpark figure, and it was quite a lot.”

Big Fish takes place in a world of lush folklore. For the set design, Murphy’s ambitions are as tall as the production’s tall tales.

“I would say this musical draws a beautiful line between what is possibly fantasy and what is obviously real,” said Jack Faulk, a senior stage and production manager.

The stage will reflect that dreamlike reality. Murphy plans to suspend a ceiling of hanging leaves over the audience and create a slew of hanging backdrops by hand, one made of more than 1000 individual origami daffodils.

“I’m always trying to push the possibilities of what we could do on the stage,” Murphy said. “And I greatly appreciate students’ willingness to assist with that mission as well.”

In fact, students are an integral part of the construction process from start to finish. Every Saturday at 9 a.m. sharp, enterprising Johnnycake members descend upon Lowe Theater, armed with screw guns and paintbrushes.

“Without Johnnycake’s help putting the sets together, we’d have to scale back on what our sets look like,” Murphy said. 

Crew opportunities range from painting murals to rigging lights, satiating both technically and artistically minded students. 

“I’ve done some really cool things at Crew. I’ve blocked off Buffalo Speedway and cut trees down, and I’ve gone up in the catwalks,” said Evan Gregory, another senior stage manager. “It’s always a fun experience up there and just rewarding because you put the work in and you can actually see the progress you’re making after three hours.”

Johnnycake members do more in Crew than just technical construction. Members bond over fresh donuts and get to know each other with weekly icebreakers. 

“I think the most important thing is it builds community in Johnnycake, and everybody has a stake in the shows that way,” Murphy said.

Crew is both staffed and managed by students. Faulk and his fellow production manager, senior Ally Rodriguez, meet weekly with the carpentry staff to create a to-do list, set attendance goals and discuss other technicalities.

Unlike previous years, the production and stage management for Big Fish overlap. 

“The stage managers are familiar with what the set’s gonna look like and the production managers are able to help facilitate the crew,” Faulk said. “When we’re talking about, say, needing to build the portals, we know exactly what everyone is thinking.”

Faulk, Rodriguez and Gregory round out the Big Fish stage management team. The trio attends nearly every rehearsal from November to February. They also oversee each moment of the show — from the first audition practice tracks to the last bows on closing night. 

“We run rehearsals; we write rehearsal reports. We stand in for people who are out sick and have conflicts. We run music, we just set up for the shows, different scenes, stuff like that” Gregory said. 

The role of the management team does not end there. 

“You’re always there if a director or an actor or anyone needs some kind of assistance in really anything,” Rodriguez said, “if they need a Bandaid, if they need a snack, if they need their blocking, we’ve got that for them.”

While their core job remains the same, stage managers adapt and learn new skills with each production. Big Fish, for example, utilizes performance stilts, while Sherwood had an armory stocked with longbows and real metal swords.

“There’s always a few small hidden challenges to each show that adds something. Whether it’s using real swords in a show or set guns, there’s always something you get to add that you’ve never quite done before,” Faulk said, “Additionally, this show is incredibly different from Something Rotten.” 

When the show moves onto Murphy’s carefully constructed landscape in Lowe, stage management heads up the tech crew. Outfitted in stage blacks, they move unseen and communicate over headset microphones. 

“You get almost like a second show that no one else hears,” Rodriguez said. 

Show-calling is another aspect which goes unrecognized by the audience, along with construction and stage management. Stage managers call each of the hundreds of sound and light cues in real–time over mic. 

“You don’t think of the people that are backstage that are freaking out or super nervous or super pumped up to run this show,” Rodriguez said, “We’re calling ‘Lights stand by. Lights go! Sound stand by. Sound go!’”

All three stage managers cited the most rewarding part of their work as watching the show bloom from start to finish. They watch the cast reach milestones with lines and blocking until they become second nature. Then costumes, lighting, and set provide the finishing touches. 

“Eventually, a few weeks before opening night is when there’s that moment of it all fitting together,” Faulk said. “Then you realize we have a show, and that’s super exciting.” 

While Murphy and the stage managers are indispensable to the production, they receive no standing ovation for their labors. 

“It’s worth it because I’m right there clapping and hollering for the cast members too,” Faulk said.“So I’m just as excited to remain behind the scenes.” 

The tech team finds that their pride in the show itself is its own reward. 

“We’re having a fantastic time,” Rodriguez said. “We’re just as excited to be there as everyone else is- we just can’t dance very well.”