Those Who Work Unseen: ND Plays

Everyone knows the joy of the fall and spring plays at Notre Dame, but not everyone knows the sheer amount of effort that goes into the play behind the scenes. Along with the hard work of the actors, the students in technical theater put in tremendous effort to make the plays everything they are一 full of tantalizing plot lines expressed through beautiful sets, intricate costuming, and carefully planned lighting and sound. I was a part of technical theater in my freshman and sophomore years, and now looking back as a senior, it’s fascinating to see how the department has developed and changed during my high school career. 

My first impression of tech theater as a freshman was that it was clearly an incredibly tight-knit community. That’s always been one of the defining traits of theater, everyone understands each other and there is a sense of camaraderie. The new freshmen look up to the seniors who seem to be all-knowing, and throughout their years in theater, they become the all-knowing seniors. During the pandemic, this sense of community has slightly faded. As Bryan Ringsted, the head of the theater department, said, the tech theater community is now “almost entirely freshmen and sophomores, with a smattering of juniors and a couple of senior technicians.” The pandemic put many things “on a standstill,” and the theater department “​​needs to be recreated, just like many other departments on campus are doing post-pandemic.”

However, despite the lack of experienced seniors and the halt COVID-19 put on theater, students have shown great enthusiasm to finally return to in-person theater! Online theater could never hold a torch to real, in-person plays, and Ringsted compared teaching theater online to “pulling teeth.” The student community is “thrilled to be with people and with their people, who are passionate about what they're doing.” The pandemic has caused many changes in the theater department and it feels different from what I knew in freshman year, but one thing that has stuck, and will always stick, is the sense of community, the age old traditions, and the fast friendships formed in theater. Once a theater kid, always a theater kid, after all! 

Being a new addition to the theater community at Notre Dame, Ringsted has brought his own touch and his own new additions to the way things are run within theater at ND. One new change that is particularly exciting for me is the fact that there are now “professional technicians” who Ringsted has “brought in to coach each area,” such as professional hair and makeup experts and professional lighting experts. This is an extremely exciting change, as students will have professionals to learn from and work with, and for someone who is interested in theater on a deeper level, this would be an invaluable experience. In addition to professional coaches working with tech students, the tech department has gained a new level of flexibility. It has become “drop in and drop out,” allowing students to be flexible due to the high level of interest. Looking back on my freshman and sophomore years in theater, I think these changes will be extremely exciting for new students and I can see that they’ll be taking the theater department in a new direction! 

The biggest desire of every theater student and every theater teacher has always been for their hard work to be appreciated and enjoyed. Ringsted shared that same desire, and says that he just wants “to raise the profile of theater on campus.” He noticed that “when I talked to a lot of my students and asked ‘what do people think of the theater department,’ they say ‘I think people don't know we have one.’” But luckily, theater now has “a wonderful marketing team whose job is just to make sure everybody knows stuff is happening!” Despite all of the new changes in the department, many things have remained constant. Theater is still primarily student run and in the future, as the younger students start to settle into the department, Ringsted plans to give more freedom to them. His big hope is to “have students who care enough about the theatre department that they want to be in charge.” Because again, “this is not supposed to be a department led by one man, this is a department led by a group of passionate theater students.”