Backstage

Much has been written about the magic of the stage, the smell of the greasepaint and the roar of the crowd. But to this child of the 50s and 60s being backstage has held a fascination both as a performer and as a technician. Like so many kids from that time, my first “stage” was the choir loft at Mass where every Sunday my classmates and I would sing out the hymns that the sisters dutifully taught us. We carefully rehearsed and learned to sing out of our heads and not out of our chests. Even as our young voices started to change, they were always pushing us to get to the high notes. We learned to sing with an “N” sound not an “M” when humming because that gave us more volume and control.

In the years between choir in elementary school and band in high school, there was not a lot of stage time for me, but from high school on, there has been a stage somewhere. In high school, the stage in the “cafetorium” wasn’t much more than a shell built into one of the walls of the room where we ate lunch every day. The only access to that stage was via a pair of steps at either end of the stage that was barely a couple of feet higher than the floor where the audience sat in neat rows of tan folding chairs. It was during my high school years that I was introduced to a “real” stage for the first time. I was a member of an orchestra that performed several concerts at the then new Jacksonville Auditorium. I will never forget making my way through the backstage area to the stage and with my heart pounding a million beats per minute looking at all the stage trappings; the ropes, pulleys and counter weights that held the curtains, flats, overhead lights and backdrops in place. I was in awe of the lights, the microphones and sound systems. It all seemed so mysterious and confusing. Finally, facing the house, I was transfixed, looking out across rows and rows of seats that seemed to fade into infinity. I could just make out the sound and lighting booths embedded in the back wall.

Since then, I have been backstage in hundreds of theaters across this wide country; from the modest stage at the Cooper Union in New York City where Abraham Lincoln made the speech that made him president all the way to a stage in Los Angeles where William F. Buckley debated the issues of his day in the latter 20th century. In fact, it was Buckley who afforded me the opportunity to travel the country and see all these stages. I was fortunate to be a small part of his debates that were broadcast on PBS during the latter part of the 1980s and all of the 1990s as part of the production team.

Left: A stage set up for a Firing Line Debate in March 1997 at Rice University in Houston. As I became familiar with backstage after backstage, I quickly learned that no two were alike. Some had small wings, the area just off curtain at the side of the stage; some were voluminous, as big as or even bigger than the performance area itself. Large wings provided space to quickly move set pieces, actors or bands onto and off of the stage proper quickly between acts. The Newberry Opera House in the Piedmont of South Carolina has a large wing on stage left side. But on stage right, there was only room for a lighting board and a sound board and the battons for the light halyards.

There are two more types of stages in my memory; outdoor stages and temporary stages, some of which were outdoors and some indoors.

Outdoor stages are a lot of fun but can be uncomfortable in the heat and rain that sometimes go with the territory. The one at Finlay Park here in Columbia is a really fun venue that allows for good interaction between performer and audience. But in the heat of the summer late afternoon concerts, the performers looked directly into the glare of the setting sun.

Temporary stages are the bread and butter for broadcasters. We set them up everywhere; in football stadiums, on basketball courts even in the Senate Caucus Room in the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington DC. Yes, we broadcast a Firing Line Debate from the very same room where the Watergate Hearing occurred in 1973.

As I sit here memories of these stages come flooding back into my consciousness; hot times on the Finlay Park Stage, sub freezing times covering Gubernatorial Inaugurations on the South Steps of the South Carolina State House, and everything between. There is one thing in common with all of those experiences, as a performer, announcer or technician; a sense of excitement as the clock ticks down to ShowTime. It’s about to begin. Oh MY!