A Child Shall Lead Them Through the Production

The audience won’t see Tay McEvers when the Laguna Playhouse production of “The Summer of the Swans” kicks off its two-weekend run tonight at the Moulton Theater.

But her presence will certainly be felt.

As stage manager, McEvers will have the entire production in her hands. Perched in the control booth high in back of the theater, she’ll be responsible for starting the show and calling all of the lighting and sound cues via headset to technical crew members running the sound and light boards.

It’s not a job for the fainthearted.

“You have to be mature and level-headed because the whole show is riding on you,” McEvers said. “If I mess up, the show gets messed up.”

But that wasn’t her only concern Tuesday night as cast and crew began the first of three nights of technical rehearsals for the adaptation of Betsy Byars’ 1970 Newbery Medal-winning coming-of-age young adult novel.

“I have finals this week,” said McEvers, a 14-year-old freshman at Aliso Niguel High School. If she wasn’t at the theater, she said, she’d be at home reading “The Odyssey” for an English test the next day.

Not only that; she and several other technical crew members would be missing their winter formal Thursday, the same night as the final technical rehearsal.

So it goes with the Laguna Playhouse Youth Theatre, where the technical crew for the winter production ranges in age from 10 to 16.

Students in the Laguna Playhouse’s two professional Youth Theatre programs, open to children ages 10 to 18 who audition, typically join to learn how to act. But they quickly discover there’s more to the theater than standing on stage basking in applause.

Students in the Conservatory (the beginning and intermediate program) and the Repertory (advanced) meet once a week between September through June. They take a variety of classes such as acting, theater history, technical theater and design.

They also put on four shows a season, during which everyone winds up holding several technical jobs.

“It’s a great educational experience,” said director Joe Lauderdale. “And it’s a great amount of responsibility because once the show is up and running the kids are in charge. I’m around, but they’re the ones who are responsible for making the show go.”

Lauderdale said other youth theater groups have young people working as technical crew members, “but they’re typical community theaters, where they’re working with limited equipment and don’t have the technical support that we have.”

Because the Laguna Playhouse Youth Theatre is associated with an Equity theater, the novice technical crew members work with professionals: the lighting designer, sound designer, master electrician, costume designer, wardrobe supervisor, lobby manager and ticket office personnel.

“As far as I know, we’re the only professional regional theater in Southern California that has a program like this,” Lauderdale said.

“It’s rare that a young person who’s 12 years old will get a chance to operate a computerized light board or our sound system, which uses mini-discs, reel-to-reels and cassettes--sometimes all in one show. So they’re having to mix all the machines together to create the sound for the show.”

The students learn on a show-by-show basis, said master electrician Glenn Powell.

“The kids see how we do it for real,” he said. “It’s not a pampered situation for them. They have their hands on every aspect of the production.”

Lauderdale, who has directed more than 40 Laguna Playhouse Youth Theatre productions over 10 years, said the students have always done a good job keeping things running smoothly behind the scenes.

Lauderdale said being stage manager is a coveted job because not everyone gets the opportunity to fill that slot. Of course, not everyone wants to.

“It’s a big responsibility and not all feel they’d be good at it,” he said. “A good stage manager has a good feel for the rhythm of the show. The calling of the cues goes along with the rhythm of the actors, so the stage manager has to be flexible enough to feel that pace.”

Although some students wind up preferring to work behind the scenes, McEvers hasn’t become a complete tech crew convert.

“No, my passion definitely is still acting,” she said.

McEvers joined the Laguna Playhouse Youth Theatre two years ago, after a few years in community theater. She worked as assistant stage manager on “Beauty and the Beast” last year. And when she failed to land the lead role in “The Summer of the Swans,” she told Lauderdale she wanted to be either assistant director or stage manager.

Although her job carries a lot of responsibility, McEvers said, she’s learned that “you can’t be power hungry because everyone will end up hating you. And you can’t take it too seriously because you have to be able to have fun with it.”

Lauderdale’s certain she’ll do fine.

“I’ve worked with professional adult stage managers who couldn’t handle what she handled,” he said. “We were just throwing the lighting and sound cues at her as we went. She didn’t have them in advance. As we worked through the show, she’d be given the cues, and she’d call them.

“She was just handling everything with great aplomb.”

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* The Laguna Playhouse Youth Theatre production of “The Summer of the Swans” will be performed at 7:30 tonight, 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 1 and 5 p.m. Sunday, and Feb. 11-13 at the Laguna Moulton Theater, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach. $15 for adults; $12 for children ages 5 to 13. (949) 497-2787.