Going to the theater is an experience. It could be compared to going to church. Usually, people get dressed up (aka their Sunday best). Some people want to be there, while others are dragged or forced for various reasons. You are likely to find at least one person dozing off. But, above all, if everything goes well, people will leave with a new perspective on life and how it works.

In order to make the production run smoothly in theater, there are many people behind the scenes. Everyone knows the main people like the director, the stage manager and in the words of my roommate, “technical people”. Well the “technical people” are responsible for a whole other world outside of what the audience sees.

First, you have all the designers and then their crew. I could go into detail of what each one is, but I’m sure that you would lose interest because our generation is said to have an extremely short attention span. I will tell you about my crew position: a dresser for the show “Fences” by August Wilson. No, not furniture, but I am a part of the costume crew. My job is to make sure that the costumes go on the actors painlessly and in the allotted amount of time.

This may sound easy and honestly, after you get the hang of it, it is. The hard part is the time and perfection. By being a dresser, you have to realize that you are taking the costume designer’s vision and putting it on the stage. In the case of “Fences,” Felia Davenport is that costume designer who has worked for months to make her costumes express each character’s style.

There are seven characters, and they all have at least two costumes each. Not to mention shoes, undershirts, hats and any other accessories the character needs. All the costume elements are put together by the costume designer and his or her crew before tech rehearsal starts for the show. Tech rehearsals are when the lights, set changes, props, sound and costumes are added to the show. For dressers, tech rehearsal is a chance for them to learn all of their costume duties.

Including myself, there are three dressers in all.  We handle the quick changes backstage. The time a dresser is given on a costume change depends on the amount of time an actor is offstage between scenes. Mostly, I work with Tracey Copeland Halter, the actor who plays Rose. She has seven costumes: four pairs of shoes, two hats and a few accessories that are thorns in my side.

The first act of the show is pretty easy. I have one costume change to a red dress, and then I mostly just make sure that her wig stays in-tact. The second act is the big challenge. I have four changes back-to-back. This includes an extra change at the end for Troydasia, the seven-year-old actor who portrays Raynell. I thought changing a hyper-active child was difficult, and then I did it in 45 seconds. It seems like when my fellow dresser, Genevieve, and I change her, something goes wrong. Her arm gets stuck, her shoes are too tight or her hair is a mess.

After the clothes are successfully on the actors and actresses, I breathe a sigh of relief because the pressure is over, at least for that scene. Initially, I was excited just to be able to participate in a production and I needed it for class credit. Then, after the preview show on Thursday night, I realized that I was a part of history. This was a first all African-American cast and director ever at the Clarence Brown Theatre. The actors had to hold 10 minutes before starting the show because the lines at the box office were too long.

On the brink of Black History month, it made me so proud to associate myself with this production and to celebrate this milestone with the cast and crew. I then realized that going to the theater, for the audience, can be a good or bad experience. However, for those of us making the pages of the script a reality, the theatre has changed our lives and they will never be the same again.