Parents, friends and students packed into the doors of Meyer Hall. The lights dim and the spot lights shine to reveal energetic thespians striding across the stage, singing, dancing and transforming into their characters with every word. A set transforms a stage into a home, a business or even a city street. Costumes take you back to the era of the show. Audiences will be taken to Ohio in the 1930s in this year’s theatre production, “Lend Me a Tenor”.

            Members of the audience see the end product, but have no idea how much work it took to put the production together. Months of planning, building, painting, sewing and rehearsing go into the performance.

            “We started [planning] last March or April, talking about what we were going to do for the coming season, and finally decided at the end of April or beginning of May last year,” theatre dean Bruce Linser said. “[Then] the director started her work on it in June.”

Since planning the show last summer, a selected cast of eight students, and have begun rehearsals. 

            “Being that “Lend Me a Tenor” has a little bit of singing in it, even though it’s a straight play, they had us sing our monologues in an opera style,” theatre senior Michael Pisani said. “It was quite comical watching everybody get up there and do these monologues in opera style.”

Pisani was cast as Saunders, a short tempered character who is trying to keep everything together. Pisani is known for taking on comedic roles in plays. However, for Pisani, it allowed him to find his character type, and what he needs to work on to further his skills.

            “[Saunders is] the general manager of the Cleveland Grand Opera Company, and he’s a very tight[ly] wound, crazy character and he is doing his best to keep control of everything that is going on.”Pisani said. “He gets very frazzled and he kind of loses it. But it all works out in the end because it’s a comedy.”

            Actors aren’t the only ones who work to put the show together. Stage management and set design are also key contributors to putting together “Lend Me a Tenor.”

“There’s a lot of work that goes into pre-production,” theatre senior and stage manager Brennon Felbinger said. “I started working with [theatre alumna and director of “Lend Me a Tenor” Brittany] Smoliak over the summer about two weeks before we came into school.  The stage management team is really important because if it didn’t exist the director would be doing a lot of jobs that she doesn’t have time to do in general.”

            The driving force for this theatre production is the director, Mrs. Smoliak. Mrs. Smoliak returns to the theatre department as a new teacher and production manager of “Lend Me a Tenor.”

“It’s a dream come true to produce a show on the same stage I grew and developed in the arts,” Smoliak said. “Ever since the summer, I really wanted to see the [students] grow more than anything.”

Even though she’s happy to be back at Dreyfoos, Mrs. Smoliak knows directing the show is not easy. Students are working on character development, blocking and rehearsing every day after school. Smoliak plans to have the whole production finished two weeks before opening night, at the end of October. “Lend Me a Tenor” is the first Dreyfoos production Mrs. Smoliak has directed.

“Going into it, I was scared. But I just had to go full throttle and pour as much energy as I could into the production,” Mrs. Smoliak said. “Everyone knows what to do, but we still have a lot of work to get done before the show.”

Though teachers direct and oversee the production, students are the real brains behind the operation.

“Students are the ones building the costumes, pulling the costumes, altering the costumes.  The sets are all built by students, created by students [and] overseen by faculty,” Linser said. “The only faculty member that isn’t augmented by students is the director, but she has student stage managers. Everything is designed to be built and created and run by our students.”