The first thing the audience hears as they step into the auditorium are the country instrumentals. As the crowd anticipates the show, hearts pound with adrenaline backstage, ready to kickstart the show. Lights dim, music fades, and chatter stills as the theater department showcases their first play of the school year.

Behind the set and curtains, the tech crew works diligently to make sure to precisely cue the sounds and lights, and help the actors with their costumes, makeup, and moving sets during the play. 

“The Diviners” is a two-act play written by Jim Leonard Jr. that takes place during the Great Depression era. The main character, Buddy Layman, suffers from water trauma. When a former pastor, C.C. Showers, walks into town, he changes the lives of the villagers and Buddy himself.

The process of preparing everything for “The Diviners” took approximately two to three weeks. Students stayed after school and even came on the weekends to work on building the set, putting together lights and sound, touching up on costumes, makeup and more.

From the thunderclaps to the melancholy music, sophomore Logan Burcham considers every minuscule detail when choosing sound cues and putting them into the queue list to play throughout the show.

“It’s a really emotional tear-evoking show and without sound, it’s a lot harder to convey,” Burcham said. “[Sound] brings it to life so much more and it brings depth and helps set this mood with how emotional this show really is.”

For weeks, sophomore Melanie Dominguez, searched for makeup designs to customize each actor. She created all the designs digitally and printed them out so newer actors could learn how to do their own makeup with some assistance from the makeup crew and senior actors. 

“After they have that taste, they’ll be able to do them by themselves a lot quicker, meaning I can go up to each individual actor to help them with any specifics or give them little critiques so it’s better for the overall experience of the show,” Dominguez said. 

Dominguez’s favorite and most time-consuming makeup design to create was Buddy’s ringworm.

“It was my first time ever trying SFX (special effects) makeup on an actor so I was really excited about trying that out and he (freshman Patrick Adams) sat so well for it and I’m so proud of the design,” Dominguez said.

The set for “The Diviners” is a versatile platform that is flexible to different scenes and their context. The platform sets the scene by portraying Buddy’s home, the outdoors, entrances for characters, and many others. Goldie’s Diner and Norma’s Dry Goods were additional sets with props that were brought in by the tech students themselves.

Piece by piece, tech theater decorated the stage like a Western-style town. Before the show nights, junior Tyrihana Johnson said that she was excited to see the actors perform on the set.

“I helped build the set and paint it and do minor details that people might’ve missed,” Johnson said. “When we started putting the set onto the stage and putting it together as a whole, and hung everything up, that was my favorite part.”

As the drama came to a close, the audience cleared out of the auditorium and greeted the cast and crew just outside. Compliments spilled out from left to right, for the actors and for the crew who made the play possible. They smile brightly, knowing that their performance and hard work were a smashing success to commence the productions of this school year. 

“I am super proud of everyone involved,” Dominguez said. “I’m proud of our techies; they pushed through all those hours and made such a beautiful set.”