Watching the curtains close from the wings on the final play of the season is always a bittersweet affair. People are crying, laughing, and cheering all at once because, after all the hard work, the show is finally done. But, for the techies backstage, the work is not quite finished.
After spending months designing and building the set, the techies must finally break everything down through a process called “strike.” For each show, this process is a little different, but it follows a general formula. First, the set dressing comes off—all the little details and adornments. Then the facing of all the walls and structures is removed before, finally, the bones of the set come down, and we are left with an empty stage. There is no evidence left of the miniature world created and destroyed within a few short months, except for a couple more holes in the stage, some leftover paint, and pieces of wood cut at oddly specific lengths and angles.
“The strike process is hard for us all,” says senior techie Caleb Zulauf. “At this point, the set feels almost like a child to us, and at the end of each show, we are forced to dismember it limb from limb, tear its organs apart, and destroy its very soul.” However, he takes comfort in the fact that “it will always live within us, in our hearts, minds, and memories.”
As a techie myself and as a senior, Mamma Mia will be my final show at Oakland Tech. After four years, I have seen my fair share of strikes, but this one has felt different. This marked the end of my contributions to techies, so watching everything come apart was a little sentimental. It can sometimes feel like all the work has been pointless when it is inevitably destroyed, but I like to think that each show, and each techie, leaves traces all over the Auditorium.
There is still a dent in the stage from where I dropped a piece of four by four (sorry, Mr. Fern). My tag remains on the shop ceiling, and a heart I carved into a table in the wings still bears the initials S+L. The back lot is permanently stained from the countless times I have dumped paint water out, and the plant I accidentally watered by doing this is flourishing.
The destruction of the set does not make its creation any less important. If anything, its transitory nature is what gives it so much meaning. The set must go down before we can build something new, and I, for one, cannot wait to see what the next generation of techies has in store.