Department set to produce Tennessee William’s famous play, ‘Servant of Two Masters’

Each year, the theater arts department puts on productions to give students a broad range of theatrical experiences.

The department’s next play, “Servant of Two Masters,” is making its debut at Fresno State on March 25.

Dozens of people participate in the process, including cast, crew, costume designers, a light and sound crew and set builders. A cast could be as large as 25 for a Shakespeare production or as small as just a few people.

“What you don’t see when watching a production is the crew backstage,” Gibson said. “There are always many more people backstage than there are onstage.”

It takes months to prepare for a show. Meetings for “Servant Of Two Masters” were held as early as December.

“We have several factors that we consider,” Gibson said. “The whole point of our production is to be entertaining for the community and provide plays that people want to see.

“But we’re an educational institution, so we are trying to train students,” she added. “One of the key things that we think about when we do our plays is to give our theater students experience. They need a certain variety of experience to go out there and say,
‘Oh, yes, I have done that.’”

Gibson says every other year the department produces classical plays like Shakespeare or Greek dramas, a contemporary piece and a musical to give students experience.

Another factor in choosing plays, Gibson said, is how many characters are involved. “You can’t just have two-person plays,” Gibson said. “Most plays hold more roles for men, so it is important to find plays that give equal opportunities for both genders.”

Auditions for the semester are as early as the first week of school and productions can lead up into the last weeks of school.

Three shows are produced a semester, one of which is a dance recital, all of which are directed by the faculty. Those productions, however, do not include student-directed plays and recitals.

Izzy Einsidler, head of lighting and sound, works five days
a week on lighting and sound design.

“In ‘tech week’ you spend five or six days of writing the actual look, the cues, setting levels, doing all that stuff,” Einsidler said. “That takes up all week before production and then we open.”

Students also participate in working on the lighting and sound used in the production, Einsidler said. He also incorporates these productions in his classes.

“There is always research involved in every show in lighting and sound,” Einsidler said. “You find out in a nutshell who wrote the play, what time period it was written in, what the director’s vision is and what the visual elements need to be.”

Each play, no matter what genre, takes a lot of time and effort to put on the various productions seen every semester.

“We are all crazy by the end of the semester,” Gibson said.