Mayfield’s stage crew has been working since October to make the Fall Musical “Urinetown” run as smoothly as possible.

This week, Nov. 7-10, is tech week for everyone involved in the musical. Tech week is a time where the entire cast and crew perform the show as if they had an audience, and the directors tell them last-minute aspects that they need to improve.

Technical Director Vincent Polowy is responsible for telling the crew what to do and giving each student a task when the show starts. He said, “We have two kids on follow [spotlights], two kids back at the lightboard… We have a props person backstage, and we have two people on each side of the stage just to move setpieces and chairs and things like that.”

Polowy builds all of the set pieces with Artistic Director Larry Braun and a few volunteer dads of the cast and crew. Students aren’t permitted to use the power tools needed because most of them aren’t 18. After the sets are built, Assistant Director Jenny Walker helps the students paint them.

Past shows like “Shrek” had nearly 20 crew members while “Urinetown” only has seven, which doesn’t make preparing for the show any more difficult, according to Polowy. He said, “There are fewer set pieces and it’s a unit set so most of it stays in place… There are a few pieces that roll on and off and a lot of the cast is doing that because the lights will come up on them, [and] I don’t really like to do blackouts during the show, so we like to go from one scene right into the next.”

Senior crew member Kingsley Jones thinks that a smaller crew makes it a lot more stressful, especially because in the beginning, the crew didn’t have any wood to build set pieces. Jones said, “We didn’t want to get rid of the ‘Beauty and the Beast’ pieces because we’re still doing that for the Spring Musical and we’d already spent a lot of time on those pieces. So, we had to get a lot of wood and build things but didn’t have that until a week after rehearsals started so we had to rush to get everything done.”

In previous shows, Jones was in charge of moving set pieces. “We have strike tape, which is basically colored tape, on the ground in the positions that the pieces need to go. We have the spot, we just have to make sure that they’re facing the right way and that we do it as quickly as possible,” Jones said.

This year, Jones and another senior, Kelsey Blanchard, are in charge of the lightboard. Blanchard said, “We have a cue book next to us which has all the cues written in it by line so we know when to hit the right button at the right time.”

Tech week is a crucial part of the show, and if a student misses even one day of tech week, they’re no longer allowed to perform or work on the show according to Polowy. These days during tech week are also extremely long for the cast, crew, and directors. Jones said on Monday, “Today I got to the school at 8 in the morning and I leave whenever we finish up here. Yesterday was about 11 hours, from noon to about 10:45.”

The directors usually stay after rehearsals are finished, not only to prepare for the show but to also prepare for tech week. Polowy said, “I think Jenny and I were here for 30 hours between Saturday and Sunday.”

The entire cast, crew, and all of the directors said they’re excited to finally perform this show. Students can watch the show for free on Thursday, Nov. 11, and tickets are on sale for their shows on Nov. 12-14 at http://www.mayfieldvocalmusic.org/.