The World of Backstage

The very nature of theatre portrays an image of bright colourful lights, glitz and glamour. However, in the dark corners of the stage operates a world which is completely unseen to the audience. Its inhabitants are people who don’t get to shine under the lights, who don’t get recognised at the stage door. In fact, at the end of the show, they often slip away unrecognised into the night. But, without these people, the theatre world would not be able to exist. They are the sometimes-vast numbers of backstage crew. In this blog, I would like to shed some of the limelight upon their world.

Before I became a writer at SpectromagicUK, between 2012 and 2020, I worked backstage in London’s West End on shows such as The Phantom of The Opera at His Majesty’s Theatre, Bat Out of Hell at The Dominion Theatre and Snow White at The London Palladium. I was also employed on casual contracts at venues such as The Garrick Theatre, The Lyceum, The Playhouse Theatre, and The National Theatre.

Employment on such shows as backstage crew will often begin just days before the opening night, but sometimes it could be weeks or even a month before. When I started work on Bat Out of Hell at The Dominion, we started three weeks before the first preview performance. This was so we had enough time to put together the massive set and enormous amount of technical equipment that came with the show. It arrived in eighteen massive articulated lorries. Firstly, we fitted the winches that would help to lift and support the higher parts of the set, to the grid at the very top of the stage area. Secondly, we fitted the hundreds of lights that would bring the set to life, to the fifty flying bars that could be raised and lowered and ran the width of the stage. Once all that equipment was up in the air and in place, it was time for the set. This was huge. The set consisted of lots of steel frames to support a sloped floor. Once that was down, this is what we built on top of it. A tunnel entrance, a rock wall, a drive-in movie theatre screen with a room behind it. An escalator, two shop fronts, a plunge pool. The front of a skyscraper that slid away to reveal a main entrance, an underground bar backing onto a sewer and a first story bedroom with a balcony. The stage crew worked solidly for those three weeks from 8am to 6pm and later on some days to get the set in place in time for the first curtain up. Check out this time lapse video of the set construction. https://youtu.be/Ej7fcvfy5XQ?si=cHOdEgvzdIv9tWXf

For my time working on Snow White at The London Palladium, the routine was slightly different. I was employed as a followspot (Spotlight) operator, and on my first day the set had already been constructed. It was four days before curtain up on the first performance. On the first morning, I was introduced to the rest of the followspot team, then we were taken very high up to the Spot Box back of the auditorium where our followspots were situated. Over the next four days, 10am to 6pm, we sat at our followspots, learning the show and being taught our plots by the lighting designer over our headsets as rehearsals progressed. It was a massive privilege to be working at one of the most famous theatres in the world and getting to shine a light on such amazing performers as Paul Zerdin, Nigel Havers, Gary Wilmott, Julian Clarey and Dawn French. The show ran for a month and on most days, there was two performances at 2:30 and 7:30. Our day would begin at 1:30 where one of us would enter the Spot Box early, keep it tidy and switch on all four spotlights so they could warm up before the show. The rest of us would arrive in the Spot Box just before the auditorium opened at 2pm and we would talk through any notes that we had been given from the previous performance. Five minutes before the show went up, (Started) we would put on our headsets and tell the deputy stage manager that were all here and ready to go. About thirty seconds before lights up, the deputy stage manager would give us our standby’s for our first cues of the show.

The first show would come down (Finish) at 5pm. At this point we would be free for a few hours. A lot of the cast and crew would take this opportunity to eat something, meet some friends and family or do some Christmas shopping before coming back into the theatre and doing everything all over again for the evening performance.

Most of my time in the West End was spent working backstage on The Phantom of The Opera. I was not part of the first rehearsal period for this show as it opened in 1986 when I was just two years old. This meant that when I went in for my first day, I was learning on the job, during live shows in front of paying audiences. This gave me such a thrill, especially when I heard the orchestra strike up for the first time. We performed eight shows a week, Monday to Saturday, with matinee performances on Thursday and Saturday afternoon.

On a normal evening performance, at 5:45, a handful of crew would come in early to pre-set the show and get it ready to start. The company manager and stage manager would be making any necessary arrangements, sound and lighting checks would also be done, and any pyrotechnics would be tested. This gave us an opportunity to fix any issues that had arisen before the audience came in at 7pm. Soon after half six, the rest of the crew and the cast would arrive and start to get ready. The Phantom make up would normally take about half an hour to apply. The crew would get changed into their all-black clothing. Some crew members would have cues to carryout on stage, during a scene, while the lights were up, in full view of the audience. These crew members would have to get changed into a basic period costume and bowler hat so they would blend in with the rest of the cast. Leading up to the start of the performance, the deputy stage manager would give a series of calls to let us all know how long until curtain up. These would be thirty minutes (The half) at 6:55, fifteen minutes (The quarter) at 7:10, five minutes (The five at 7:20 and “Act one beginners” at 7:25. These calls were always five minutes early so when it came to “The beginners” call, everyone would be ready to start. At 7:30, assistant stage managers would check that all cast and crew on their side of the stage are present and ready to go, Front of house would

give their clearance, And the deputy stage manager would give their first cue. “House lights down, LX cue 1…Go.”

The first half would normally finish at around 8:40. At this point it would be all hands on deck to help with the massive scene change that took place during the interval from the Paris Opera House rooftops to the masquerade ball. The second half would start around 9:00 and run until 9:55. At this point the audience would leave, the cast would change out of their costumes, The stage managers would be writing and filing their show reports. The sound team would be making their way around various dressing rooms collecting microphones and putting them on charge for the next day. The costume department would be gathering any laundry that needed doing, the wig department would be going round the dressing rooms, collecting the wigs and putting them in safe storage for the next day, and the make-up team would be in the Phantom’s dressing room, carefully removing his prosthetics that would have been glued onto his face. The front of house staff will be cleaning and tidying the auditorium, and the stage door keeper will be sorting out any post-performance arrangements, locking the dressing room doors and closing the backstage area. They are normally the last to leave the building at around 11:30.

To run “The brilliant original” Phantom of The Opera in London’s West End, the theatre required a cast of thirty, a stage crew of fourteen, a flying (Raising and lowering the scenery and curtains up and down) crew of ten. Five stage maintenance staff, a director, an assistant director, a musical director, an orchestra of fifteen. A company manager, a stage manager, a deputy stage manager, five assistant stage managers, a lighting and effects team of ten. A stage door keeper, a wigs department, a wardrobe department, a make up department, three theatre managers and a host of front of house staff. All in all, just one single performance, pre-Covid, required over two hundred and forty people. That’s over seven times the amount of people that you see on stage.

So, the next time that you watch a show at a theatre, I can guarantee that there are a lot more people and a lot more things going on behind the scenes that the audience never get to see and it’s all helping create the magic of theatre.

By Andy Smith