Web site on theater production
provides look ‘Behind the Curtain’

by Tom Parisi

While NIU theater students gear up for the April production of “The Grapes of Wrath,” their counterparts in the Department of Communication are working diligently to capture the behind-the-scenes drama.

Student video and media crews are documenting the production’s progress in a project known as “Behind the Curtain.” And they hope you’ll tune in.

Vignettes are posted online regularly with more polished “episodes” appearing every two weeks at www.comm.niu.edu/curtain/. Eventually, a full-length documentary will be produced for local public access television and used by the School of Theatre and Dance as a recruiting and marketing tool.

The video documentary crew members are all students in an advanced media production course taught by Communication Professor Laura Vazquez. “We want to record the progression of the play, from rehearsals and stage construction to costume design and lighting,” Vazquez said.

“Our goal is to document how it goes from a cast of students who might not even know each other to a major theatrical production,” she said. “It’s a challenging, collaborative assignment for my students because they must learn how to find the best shots in a way that’s inconspicuous, how to edit down tons of video footage and how to assemble it all into an interesting story.”

“Behind the Curtain” is a twist on a Vazquez course taught last fall, when her students produced weekly Web segments documenting activities in the College of Business’s “Apprentice” class.

“Our students are learning that the wave of the future for dissemination of video is through the Internet,” Vazquez said. “These types of courses give them hands-on, pressure-on experience. You have to respond quickly and tell your story quickly. I tell the students, ‘If your final piece is more than three minutes, you blew it. It will take too long to download and your audience will go away.’ ”

“Behind the Curtain” relies on the advance skills of four graduate student directors: Marcus Leshock, Matt Holdren, Christopher McPherson and Brian Ekdale. Although the project has been little advertised, the Web site already is receiving about 2,000 hits weekly.

“As far as we know, we’re the first school to try this,” Ekdale said.

He hopes “Behind the Curtain” will whet the appetite of theatergoers.

“We think it’s exciting that people can see what’s going on with the production before they see the performance. We hope it will build audience interest in the play,” he said. “At the same time, we’re getting practical experience creating something that has to be in a finalized form under a limited time schedule.”

Cast and crew members for the “The Grapes of Wrath” are benefiting from the experience as well.

“This gives our students an opportunity to learn to be comfortable and less self-conscious in front of the camera,” said theater Professor Christopher Markle, who is directing the play. “It’s also wonderful to have other people validate all the work that goes into a production. Our students devote weeks of their lives preparing for a performance. It’s a lengthy, intense process.”

Colin Jones, who will be performing in the lead role of Tom Joad, said he wasn’t thrilled at first with the thought of having video crews on hand during rehearsals. But he said the process has gone smoothly.

“They have been quietly voyeuristic, and that’s been a joy,” Jones said. “They ask questions once in a while but very unobtrusively. I thought I would be hiding from (the camera crews) all the time, but since they haven’t over-approached the cast, it makes us want to go to them.

“I’m excited to see the end product,” he added.

An air date for the completed “Behind the Curtain” documentary hasn’t yet been established.

Students in the School of Theatre and Dance will perform “The Grapes of Wrath” from April 7-10 and from April 14-17 at the O’Connell Theatre inside the Stevens Building on the NIU campus. More information is available at http://www.niu.edu/theatre/season2004/grapes.htm.

3-28-05