Center Stage on Backstage

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Elaine Seaton
Costume Director and Accounts Receivable, Lone Star Ballet

Elaine Seaton’s daughter saw her first production of “The Nutcracker” when she was only two years old and immediately wanted to be a dancer. By 1993, when Roxann turned five, Elaine enrolled her as a student at the Lone Star Ballet. For recital costumes, Elaine pulled out her sewing skills and made whatever her daughter needed.

Of course, once word spread among the other mothers that Elaine could sew, it was all downhill from there.

"I could sew but no one knew, so I really messed myself up,” laughs Elaine. “In 1996 Roxann played a Party Girl in ‘The Nutcracker’ and I made her dress. Everyone said, ‘Oh, you can sew?’ and it just evolved into more.”

At the time, Elaine was busy in an accounting career, one that spanned 35 years, and raising her two children. Nights and weekends slowly turned into sewing time, and by 2003, Elaine left bookkeeping to join the LSB staff, officially becoming the costume director in 2005. In her 17 years of making costumes, Elaine has had a hand in stitching, mending, embellishing, and crafting from scratch thousands of garments for all the major shows of the season, including recitals and other performances throughout the year. The number of bodies she has fitted and dressed, at this point, is immeasurable.

Each show is given a budget for costumes and that helps determine whether they will be purchased from a catalog and tailored or if she’ll create an original herself.

“’The Nutcracker’ is a little different because the costumes are all there, they just have to be fitted,” she says. “But that’s still a lot of work for a cast of 125.”

Each production, whether it be last season’s “Cinderella” or this season’s “Dracula,” requires every costume to be flexible, breathable and reusable. The garments cannot be restricting and bigger seam allowances will be used for future alterations.

The real work begins once a production is underway, when Elaine can be found “sewing madly,” as she puts it. Rarely has she sat in the audience to watch a performance. Instead, she might catch a scene from the wings while busily helping with quick-changes and quick-stitches. Always on hand are scissors, needles and thread.

“It’s a little tricky to fit dancers sometimes, but adults are easy on one hand because at least they can communicate. The younger ones always say their costumes are itchy, and I think, ‘You think this is itchy?’” Elaine laughs. “’Just wait until you’re on stage and you’ll see how itchy it is.’”

Fortunately, Elaine has a handful of helpers to keep the costume creation moving, from the early stages of production to performance nights. Because whether or not she’s simply adding sequins to an already-made tutu or sculpting an original costume, multiply one by 10, 20 or 100. Sewing madly, indeed. Even when they bring in a company for a performance, someone needs to be on hand for last-minute repairs. That someone is Elaine. Long gone are the days of sewing on nights and weekends on a fold-out table in her living room. The LSB has a large dedicated space for her hundreds of costumes, a few sergers and sewing machines, as well as stacked containers of sequins, beads and other craft supplies.

However, there was that one time she dyed more than 200 yards of tulle in her own washing machine. Elaine’s work ethic leaves little room to doubt her dedication to the ballet.

“I love seem them on stage,” she says, “and knowing we got them there.”

Dorthy Brown
Booking Coordinator, Amarillo Civic Center and Globe-News Center

Upon moving to Amarillo from Dumas in 1983, Dorthy Brown applied for a job with the city. Anything would do, and of the five openings at the time, the human resources director suggested one Dorthy might like.

“I thought, really? Why that?” says the booking coordinator of the Amarillo Civic Center. “The lady in HR said she thought I’d do well working under stress, and I’ve been the booking coordinator ever since.”

From dates and contracts to insurance and rent, Dorthy handles it all. To put it plainly, the event starts and ends with her.

The Amarillo Civic Center is the go-to place for everything from meetings, trade shows and wedding receptions to sporting events, conventions and banquets. The annual Nutcracker ballet is held there every December in the auditorium. The Globe-News Center for the Performing Arts was built across the street in 2006 to better accommodate the Amarillo Symphony, the Amarillo Opera and the Lone Star Ballet. (The $30 million, state-of-the-art facility was designed with superior acoustics and a unique orchestra shell.) Many of the out-of-town shows, Broadway and otherwise, are performed there.

With so much access to concerts and shows, you’d think Civic Center employees would have a regular seat saved at every event.

“I worked here several years and never saw anything, but I finally started seeing some of the Broadway Spotlight Series,” laughs Dorthy. “We just had the Summer Youth Musical with the opera and it was fabulous. They were better than Broadway. There’s just something about homegrown talent.”

The inner-workings of her position involve a great deal of detail, all of which begins with the master calendar. Technology may be a requirement for some, but Dorthy much prefers the old-school method – one large schedule book per year, a pencil, a red pen and a blue pen. In her own way, she keeps up with every upcoming event, a job that is not only meticulous but also prone to error.

“When I first started, everything was done by hand, and then one day Sherman said he was going to put all my posting sheets on the computer. I begged him not to,” she laughs. “I needed to touch them, you know? But then Monday morning I came in and it was all on the computer. Once I realized how much better it was, I thought, ‘How come we didn’t do this years ago?’ But I still need my book. I still do my own system.”

Part of what Dorthy has to consider when booking events are the contract requirements, especially for traveling shows. For example, Disney requires that no other family-friendly show is scheduled six weeks before or after theirs, something Dorthy has to keep in mind. Additionally, there are a number of facility requirements when it comes to the sporting events. After all, ice (for the Bulls) and turf (for the Venom) aren’t conducive for a high school graduation, a boxing match or a Working Ranch Cowboy Association event that requires a good layer of dirt to be spread out on the floor of the coliseum.

In her career at the Civic Center, Dorthy has prepared roughly 13,000 rental agreements and overseen the attendance of more than 15 million patrons. Her workload has increased significantly since becoming the booking coordinator nearly three decades ago, and considering the fact that she’s booked events well into 2016, things don’t seem to be slowing down.

“You have to be so careful. There have been times when I wake up in the night thinking I’ve forgotten something. I’ll actually get up and write myself a note. You know, you have to take care of your clients,” says Dorthy. “In the 25 years I’ve been here, there’s not been anything that’s not workable. You just have to be organized.”

Greg Dunlap
Technical Director, Amarillo Little Theater

It was to run a dental lab that Greg Dunlap moved from Albuquerque to Amarillo in 1982. He met his wife, Mary, a dental hygienist, in the process but ended up leaving the field when something a little more interesting came along.

“My brother, Roy, was acting at the ALT and asked me if I wanted to be in a show. It was ‘I’m Not Rappaport’ and he was playing a drug dealer in a park and I bought drugs off of him,” laughs Greg. “Yeah, we made our parents proud.”

By the mid-80s, Greg was already building sets as a Little Theater volunteer. When he burned out on the dental lab business, he worked directly with Allen Shankles, manager and artistic director, to establish a full-time position on staff. With a good background in building and construction, and a growing knowledge of electronics, Greg was named technical director in 1994.

“I wanted to make this the best place possible,” says Greg. “Ask any volunteer. We all love this place. It’s a real community theater.”

One of Greg’s first projects was overhauling the control booth and office, the area behind and above the audience where all the cues are called and lighting is programmed. It’s also the location of the “best seat in the house,” a solitary theater seat positioned amid the control grids and computers. From there, any guest of Greg’s will have the best view of the stage.

“Guys and Dolls” was the first performance for which Greg was responsible, and though he had a good idea about how to run the show, he ended up having to run it alone.

“I was still in the process of learning and Richard Kock was here working the lighting. We opened Thursday night to a preview audience and then he tells me he’s leaving on Saturday,” says Greg. “Well, I taped the Friday show and studied it all day Saturday so I could call cue Saturday night by myself. I figured it out.”

Even though everything is digital, the technical work of a production requires more than just a man and a computer. Four years ago he installed a new electrical system involving nearly 200 light controllers. One basic light operation often calls for two spot operators, a sound person, and about eight people backstage moving sets. There may be only two people on stage, but there are at least eight people in the background making them look good, according to Greg.

“If we’re doing our job, then the audience doesn’t know we’re here. But if we screw up, they do.”

There’ve been a few shows in years past that Greg enjoyed more than others, if only for the level of lighting difficulty and technique. Technically speaking, they wowed the audience.

“You always have your favorites,” he says. “’Jesus Christ Superstar’ was great, and ‘Sweeny Todd.’ Just a technically neat show.”

While lighting and effects take up a large chunk of Greg’s time, set design also falls under the umbrella of his responsibilities. In a nutshell, Tana Roberson, scenic designer, comes up with a plan and Greg figures out how to build it. Together with volunteers, they construct a set from the stage floor up. The same is true for the ALT’s Adventure Space, a smaller, more intimate stage space down the street.

Greg and Mary’s daughter, Megg, 19, is studying theater at West Texas A&M University in hopes of teaching drama someday. As you might expect, she grew up on the ALT stage. And though Greg can usually be found backstage or in the control booth, occasionally you’ll see him under the heat of the stage lights giving in to the acting bug. In 2006, he played Boo Radley in “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

“This is like a home,” says Greg. “You get protective of this place. Everyone is so neat. We have people from all walks of life down here hammering nails.”

by Jennie Treadway-Miller

Jennie was a columnist for the Chattanooga Times Free Press for eight years prior to moving to Amarillo in 2008. She is an avid reader, runner and writer.