Troy’s loss against the Greeks resulted in many Trojan men’s death, leaving the rest of the city burning. This fall play showcases the unity and audacity of the Trojan Women resisting this absolute desolation.

In addition to all the dedicated actors in The Trojan Women, this video features junior Bri Rucker, freshman Peter Ostrem, sophomore Josh Holloway, and Media/Technology Coordinator Gene Swanson. It focuses on the behind-the-scenes tech crew and their parts contributing to the production of this incredible play.

0:26 Rucker: I’m Bri Rucker, and I use he/she/they pronouns, and I’m in 11th grade.
0:29 Ostrem: I’m Peter Ostrem. I’m a freshman.
0:31 Holloway: My name’s Josh Holloway. Sophomore here at SPA. He/him.
0:35 Swanson: My name is Gene Swanson, I’m in the tech department. I’ve been working at SPA for 32 years.
0:42 Rucker: I’m doing the music. I’m doing all the sound effects you’re going to see. Ambient, orchestral tracks, and monologue. Some waves.
0:51 Ostrem: I started tech in sixth grade, and I do lighting. You can use those cables to trail them into the board, and you can control each light individually. And then, you set cues for the actual show. So when lights change, they all changed at once instead of just having to do it independently.
1:11 Holloway: Our job as students, we’re supposed to chip in like come up with ideas if we have any thoughts, and also we’re the ones that set up the light. So we’ll do a lot of teamwork. We’ll put up lights and then we’ll sit down. Mr. Severson will tell us the mood, and we’ll try to use the colors to correspond with that mood.
1:30 Rucker: We each have our own copy of the scripts. The actors have their own thing. They have their own highlighted lines for the characters. We have pre-scripted words like cue-four, cue-one, and this is like what to do during that.
1:42 Swanson: The one thing you have to understand about the Huss now, the sound and the same with lights, is not only are we mixing in the room, but I’m sending sound to the back of the stage [and] to the back hallways. So the artists in the dressing room with the video back there can see the play and know when to come out when their lines are needed, when they’re called to the stage, or when they need to be on stage. And then, we push the sound out to the front of the entryway, with a video of the TVs for people to see and share.
2:17 Ostrem: So I’m just here for like a week and a half, but actors are here starting like September.
2:22 Rucker: It’s pretty easy I feel like. Anyone can pick it up. It’s mostly like patience and a lot of long cues and six pages in order to take it out. So you have to also pay attention, So patience and focus just throughout the entire play.
2:40 Holloway: We face a lot of challenges every single time. It’s just like time management, [and] it’s a key for this because we’re on a time crunch a lot. I was there from 10 a.m to 9 00 p.m, which is a lot, but it’s a lot of fun. But it’s just like a matter of knowing what’s wrong, fixing it quickly, and just making sure it’s good. So yeah.
3:06 Ostrem: Like me and Josh, the other lights guy, we got to go like model and be the actors on the stage to see where the lights are, and we’re never going to do that, so that was pretty fun.