weekend essentials Nov. 11to Nov.14 ON DISPLAY Michigan was once a hub of American manu- facturing and still is a thriving cultural hotbed. So this Saturday or Sunday, why not come out between 12 and 4 p.m. to the Museum on Main Street and celebrate the area's storied past? The self- guided exhibit will present historic area industries and cultur- ally significant items, like animator Joe Hale's Disney artistry. Admission is free. AT THE MIC This Saturday, the Women's Glee Club will perform with Dul- cissima, a women's choir at Plymouth- Canton High School. The Club's fall concert will begin at 8 p.m. and feature pieces by Felix Mendelssohn-Bar- tholdy, Srul Irving Glick and Elizabeth Alexan- der. Tickets from $5 with a student ID. AP Pek By Sharon Jacobs, AssistantArts Editor nstage at the Power Center, three of the starring actors in the upcoming Music, The- atre & Dance opera "The Elixir of Love" rehearse a scene. Dressed in plainclothes in front of an imitation-stucco archway, they belt out the same several measures repeatedly. A guy twirls a girl once, twice, then attempts to sit her on his knee - which she misses. The three actors laugh, and the director sitting in the center of the audience chuckles and explains the proper motion. Behind a curtain stage right, stage manager Michelle Elias, an MT&D senior, watches the goings-on from a small col- ored TV screen. Next to it is another screen, this one in black and white and displaying the pit, currently home to just one rehearsal pianist. It's the second night oftech week for "Elix- ir," and, though the chorus has yet to arrive and the stage is sparsely populated, behind the arch is another drama. Murmuring into her headset, Elias communicates with her assistant stage managers and the sound and lighting techni- cians over two radio channels while viewing the onstage action. She cues members of the run crew - the backstage hands in charge of sets and props during a show's run - non- verbally, using a system of switches and lights. "I can flip the switch on, and that's the warning, and flip- ping the switch off is the 'go.' And so when the light goes off, you pull the rail," Elias said. Backstage, the "rail" refers to the system of ropes that raise set pieces, lights or curtains. Elias will be behind the scenes at every performance of "Elixir of Love," as she has done as stage manager for several other plays and musicals before it. "I'm there through the entire process, from beginning to end," she said. And by this point, though an audience has yet to see it, Elias's show is nearing the end of a long road to its debut. "What you see onstage, that's the design, that's the final product," said MT&D senior Corey Lubowich, who designed the costumes and scenery for StarKid Potter's "A Very Potter Sequel" in May. Though they themselves remain invisible to most theater- goers, designers have labored over every aspect of how their shows will look, and opening night represents the culmina- tion of their jobs. "It's the process of it being in your head, to being in the shop, to being in the rehearsal room and then being onstage," said MT&D senior Shawn McCulloch, the costume designer for last month's musical "Into the Woods." And for Elias, Lubowich, McCulloch and the students behind the scenes of any 'U' production, this process of bringing the script to life begins months before the show opens its doors. Creating a world Being picked to design a mainstage production at the Uni- versity is no small honor. "Within the University shows, you work your way up to actually designing a mainstage," Lubowich said. "You work backstage, you work in the shop, you sort of get assignments along the way before you're allowed." Student mainstage designers tend to come from the MT&D Design & Production program, and their classes are often like mock productions. "You do it all hypothetically," McCulloch said. in his courses, he designs the costumes for made-up shows and then finds the sample fabrics that best match each character. But of course, classwork for designers is very different from the real thing. Before "Into the Woods," McCulloch was used to having a professor constantly looking over his shoul- der. For that show, he was on his own to design after meeting I like the more organizational side of it, and I get to play make belieVe every day.... It's a job where you are paid to create fake worlds and entertain people. -Michelle Elias, MT&D senior with his director in April to discuss the basics. Fifth-year MT&D senior Adam McCarthy, the lighting designer for "Pentecost," also started out by meeting with his director. But from the very beginning, lighting is defined and differentiated from scenic and costume design by its lack of physicality. "The director and I had a couple of meetings (and) talked about more, sort of, the abstract qualities of the show - what it's about, how it 'works,' " McCarthy said. "In particular with the school productions, what gener- ally happens is the scenic designer and the costume designer meet with the director far before the lighting designer and sort of create the world, the theme and the concept of the play," he added. "And at that point the lighting designer sort of responds to their work." Since "Pentecost" was set in an abandoned Eastern Euro- pean church, McCarthy spent his summer doing research on churches, but he didn't start making actual designs until fur- ther along in the process. McCulloch had to approach the physical costume designs for "Into the Woods" much earlier, but his work still began with a mad hunt for information. "A lot of designers, when they design a show, they don't wantto see other productions," he admitted. "With this show, there's a DVD recording of when Bernadette Peters was in it on Broadway, in the original production, and I saw that years ago. SoI kind of owned up to the fact that I've already seen it and know about it, soI looked at lots of productions." Once McCulloch had finished his research - which included learning the traditional garb of the princes and peasants who roam the woods of his show - he began to render his ideas. A costume designer's renderings are tra- ditionally done in watercolor on paper but nowadays can extend into any medium, including Photoshop. A rendering is a detailed portrait, with the subject standing in a typical pose and dressed in the most accurately colored and textured clothing possible. "I really tried to have fun with the stepmother and stepsis- ters," McCulloch said. "The two princes are pretty directly related to research of Prince Albert and Napoleon...(but) I've never seen a wolf that looked like mine." McCulloch's Wolf wore fur-covered pants but was bare from the waist up. Since designers often make their render- ings before a show is cast, making sure the ors fit the gen- eral concept behind their costumes is important. "One of the things I talked (about)with the director very early on was that he wanted the Wolf to be dangerous yet sexy," he said. "So one of the big concerns with the Wolf was, do we have a guy who has the goods? And we did." For Lubowich, specific actors weren't a concern when con- ceptualizing the set design for "A Very Potter Sequel." Work- ing on an adaptation of a well known series, he had his show's underlyingmaterial right in front of him, and the "Harry Pot- ter" books themselves were his inspiration: The set for the sequel was based on the American cover of the first book. "I really loved the art style of the cover of the book, so I wanted to do something inspired by that," Lubowich said. From rendering to reality + As the costumes and set are laid out, the props come in. Elena Garcia, a junior in MT&D and LSA, was hired as co- propsmaster for MUSKET's upcoming production of "Aida" and immediately met with both the set designer and direc- tor. Garcia's work is less about artistic creation and more about realization of what the designers and directors want. "It's their vision for the show that it's our job to make happen in the way that is the most artistic and the most in line with their vision that we can," she said of taking on props. See BEHIND THE SCENES, Page 3B FILM Chaos reigns in Lars von Trier's 2009 film "Antichrist," playing Saturday at midnight at the State Theater. The film stars Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a couple who, after the death of their child, take exile in a cabin in the woods. That's when the supremely crazy shit starts. A fox starts talking, the leads have extremely graphic sex and there's sexual violence so disgusting it has become legend- ary in film circles. Not exactly whole- some family fun. CONCERT Head down to The Ark tonight to see singer-songwriter and Dolly Parton-enthusi- ast Mindy Smith per- form. Been hunting for the perfect version of Dolly's "Jolene"? Then look no further. Sure, no one can replace the queen of country herself, but Smith comes pretty damn close. Move over, Taylor Swift. Oh, and don't worry, there will be banjos. Tickets from $20; doors open at 7:30.