FUHS Academy of the Arts just closed one of their fall productions, The Foreigner. While it displayed fantastic acting, the production was so much more than what the audience sees. The technical elements, including set design, lighting, and so much more contribute to establishing the environment of the play.

One technical aspect is lighting. Not only do lights set the tone and attract the audience’s focus, they also help the actors with their movements and reactions.

“The lighting is very important in the case that it tells the story of the show, it translates what’s happening on stage, it makes your focus on certain things and not on certain things based on where the light’s pointed and reciprocated,” said junior Calvin Tate, head lighting designer.

Senior Ashley Shilts, the student costume designer, also played a lead role in the show.

“I chose the costumes for the characters and I made sure the costumes are set backstage to where they need to be so that people can change into them quickly and to sort of organize them while keeping them in check,” Shilts said.

Another important element in theatre are props, designed by senior Ruby Hernandez was in charge of this technical element.

“There’s so many little things and props and it’s hard to find some of them sometimes because they have to be so specific and correct to the time, so sometimes I’ll like pull a prop and it won’t be exactly what [the director] wants and so I’ll have to look again,” Hernandez said. “I had to create a lot of stuff, so it was basically like trial and error, trying things and seeing if it works and if it doesn’t trying something else.”

Senior Abigail Lange, was both head makeup and hair designer and a lead role.

“Well, it’s kind of taken a lot of trial and error to be honest,” Lange said, “I’ll try out a design and sometimes [Mr.] Despars will say ‘Eh, I don’t like it. Change it.’ Or sometimes it may not work with hair, [or] it may not work with their skin types so, it’s honestly a work in progress constantly.”

For this production, senior Tim Coleman was the sound designer. Although it may sound easy, finding sounds to use in a show can be quite difficult.

“Sound design for shows requires a lot of work both with actors recording for voice overs as well as outside works for sounds, finding sounds but as well putting together boards for presentations, it’s a lot of collaborating,” Coleman said. “I’m [usually] taking ideas from the script and creating sound either by finding them on the internet or by actually recording them myself,” Coleman said.

For The Foreigner and many like it, technical elements help a show reach its full potential. It takes a lot of work to put a show together for both actors and tech, but in the end when it all comes together, it’s worth it.