Unless you're Jackie Reed's mother, you probably won't notice that the 16-year-old actress plays both a dance hall hostess, who will appear in the first act of the Elden Street Players rendition of ""Sweet Charity"," and Rosie, who will appear in the second. Reed credits the behind-the-scenes members of the production for helping her to make the two characters distinctive.
"Because I do play more than one character, hair and makeup have to disguise me," said Reed at a recent Saturday rehearsal. And the choreographer has designed different ways of moving and dancing for each role, further enabling her "to put on a different persona," said the rising Herndon High School junior.
Everyone participating in the Elden Street Players adaptation of "Sweet Charity," which opens on July 30 and runs through Aug. 21 at the Industrial Strength Theater, is a volunteer. But only the actors will get to bow and be applauded for the hours spent bringing to life the story of Charity Hope Valentine's romantic dreams and the trials and travails of her attempts to find true love.
"Take how many people there are on stage Ñ multiply it by three Ñ that's how many people worked behind stage to put this on," said Richard Klare, the show's producer, who wound up doubling as the set director. As producer, Klare is the show's business manager. He lines up the technicians, handles the budget, gets the word out for auditions, and publicizes the event. In the end, he is the one responsible to the theater-company for the production.
KLARE ESTIMATES that he's already put in about 100-120 hours for the production, and he came on only six weeks ago because the original producer dropped out. "My neighbors are nasty at me because I haven't cut my grass," he said.
The actors and technicians have committed three months to the production, balancing their work schedules with intense rehearsals, Klare said. They are all unpaid, but he believes the end product is worth all the effort.
Klare is a theater enthusiast who recently produced "Wit" for the Silver Spring Stage, and the production won the Ruby Griffith Award for All Round Production Excellence. He volunteers in community theater "for the fun of it." Klare finds that the satisfaction of producing comes "when the whole thing works and coordinates together."
Laura Baughman, props manager for "Sweet Charity", agrees that "being able to pull it all together and give the audience a wonderful experience," is the greatest motivation for the work she performs behind the scenes. It is her job to find all the moveable properties for the set Ñ things like badges, cigarettes and top hats, or make-up to put on top of a dressing table. "All the things that make you feel like you actually live in it," she said.
"Finding unusual things is difficult, and so is doing the research to track down unusual things," said Baughman. For "Sweet Charity", all the props must be true to its mid-twentieth-century time frame, and finding items such as the napkin holders that were used in diners then is quite challenging.
Baughman sees her job as "providing a frame for the actor's actions." She tries not to have her work actively noticed. "You don't want the audience to say 'What a wonderful set,' you want them to say 'What a wonderful play,'" she said.
JoEllen Richardson, the show's musical director, doesn't have to worry about napkin holders, but she does have to make "a cohesive whole out of a cast with different levels of abilities and experience," she said. It is her job to teach the music to the cast, coach the lead and the chorus and to coordinate with the instrumentalists.
Richardson has been doing musical direction on and off for 30 years, and she's also been active as a performer. "There are different ways to be satisfied. You have a different mindset for backstage," she said. Although for Richardson, like her fellow backstage workers, "the reward is watching it come together," she also enjoys the learning process. "My vision, especially in community theater, is to get the best people you can find and get them to do the best they can do. That's the satisfaction," said Richardson, who has a background in education.
BUT THE PROCESS can be difficult. According to Richardson, the biggest obstacle in preparing for "Sweet Charity" was getting the cast together. "We had one actor drop out," she said. And since it's summer, the pool of possible replacements was small, but it all worked out, she said.
Another challenge for Richardson is to "try to get a full orchestra sound without a full orchestra." She must do this with five reed players, two brass, one drummer and one keyboard player, who doubles as Richardson's fiancŽ.
Because "Sweet Charity" is a dancing show, it is full of fun, jazzy music throughout, even under the scenes.
"We're going to be busy," she said.
But no one is busier at rehearsals than the director, Ellen Dempsey. "Instead of putting your head over his left shoulder, put it over his right," she said to a cast member during the run-through of a scene. "The turn is good," she says to someone else. She reminds another actor to "step back and over."
"My job is to create the vision that I want for the show and communicate that to the artistic staff and the actors and to stage it so it's enjoyable to the audience," she said. She is the administrator for dance, acting and music in "Sweet Charity", and she is attempting to use all three of these artistic expressions as the vehicle to display the "universal struggles within one girl's story."
THIS IS THE FIRST musical that Dempsey has directed on her own, although she has performed and stage-managed before. "An actor is very focused on one part of the production and trusts that other parts will fall into place," she said. "As the director, you have to make sure everything falls into place, and you have to understand the whole piece," she said.
Dempsey has found some challenges in her new role as director. First, she had to find a way to produce "really great dances in a small space." And then she had to find a way to incorporate those "little accidental moments that work so well you have to keep them in the show."
The "countless hours" that Dempsey has put into the show are rewarded when she sees the joy on the actors' faces as they perform, and on the faces of the audience when they see the show.
But performing isn't the only thing that brings joy to actors' faces. For Michelle Jones, who plays Helene, her first sight of the set and the costumes was enough to do the trick. Because the actors only recently moved into the Industrial Strength Theater, she didn't see the set being built or the racks of costumes allotted to the show.
Jones was also enthusiastic about having heard the orchestra for the first time the night before.
Jones, who had done other shows, has enormous respect for the people behind the scenes. "Acting is just a part," she said. "The audience will see the actors, but the show wouldn't happen without everything else."