Those who saw B-W’s production of The Phantom of the Opera agreed that the cast and orchestra mastered the challenges show posed. The same may be said of those who worked behind the scenes. The program listed more than 80 people who were not on stage but had a hand in making the production look spectacular and run smoothly through the 12 performances.
Although B-W’s budget for Phantom was miniscule when compared to the Broadway production, clever planning, design and ingenuity resulted in a show that was just as satisfying.
Jeremiah Landi had a hand in several technical aspects of the production. A junior theatre major, physics minor and self-described tinkerer, Landi’s responsibilities including creating the animated monkey music box that figured prominently in several scenes and needed to be operated by remote control.
Due to the limited budget, people donated old remote control cars which were cannibalized for parts. After much trial and error, Landi said, the monkey moved when controlled off stage. Then the sound equipment arrived. That interfered with the monkey’s radio signal and, just two days before the show opened, Landi had to start from square one to reprogram the prop, a task he accomplished in the knick of time.
“This was the most technically difficult show I’ve ever done,” Landi said. “We were doing a lot of things with electricity and used every circuit we had. It offered us new chances to do difficult things.”
Erin Butcher, a junior theatre major from Copley, was working at the Idaho Shakes-peare Festival last summer when she heard that B-W would be doing Phantom. Immediately she called costume designer and professor Charlotte Yetman and asked to be her assistant. The rest of the summer and time leading up to the show’s opening in November was a nonstop push to pull together the 200 costumes required. The crew and volunteers spent countless hours building costumes from scratch and altering a few of the rented and stock costumes.
Butcher used 40 yards of fabric in a costume for the character Carlotta and had to build two versions for the actresses who were double cast in the role. Another major responsibility was the creation of the costume plot. That involved listing every piece of clothing and accessories required for each scene, and the set up for a quick costume changes.
Both Landi and Butcher see their Phantom experiences as real resume boosters. “To be the assistant costume designer for the first non-professional production is a big deal,” Butcher said.
As a part of the technical staff, Butcher said it was interesting to see the “bones” of the show and how the technical pieces added to it. It was, for her, a testament to the impor-tance of the technical side of any show.
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