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<\/a><\/p>\nThe students in BUSTI\u2019s design class use a basic model kit to create their own production designs. Photos by Cydney Scott.<\/em><\/p>\n Lindsey Walko remembers back in the sixth grade, when she saved the day while playing one of the orphans in a production of Annie<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cDuring the preset, our stage manager forgot to put the laundry basket on,\u201d Walko says, and she and the rest of the cast quickly noticed that the key prop was missing. \u201cWhile everyone was freaking out on stage during \u2018It\u2019s The Hard-Knock Life,\u2019 I calmly walked off stage and brought it on.\u201d<\/p>\n At the time, she says, some people suggested that her future as a stage manager\u2014the person who makes sure that everything in a play happens when it\u2019s supposed to\u2014was a lock. But Walko needed a few more years to come around. Now, as she approaches her senior year in high school, Walko says, \u201cStage management is my true passion.\u201d<\/p>\n This summer, the five-week-long Boston University Summer Theatre Institute for high school students, known as BUSTI, offers a new program for those who, like Walko, may want to work behind the scenes.<\/p>\n \u201cThe new design track means that the BUSTI program even more closely mirrors the first year BFA experience at the College of Fine Arts School of Theatre,\u201d says Jim Petosa, director of\u00a0 the CFA School of Theatre.\u00a0\u201cIncoming students can now choose either a performance or design and production core curriculum.\u201d<\/p>\n Most theater productions require many more people offstage than on. There\u2019s a stage manager, a lighting designer, a set designer, a costume designer, a sound designer, and more. But most \u00a0theater education programs are weighted toward the performers who act and sing and dance, and toward \u00a0those who want to direct.<\/p>\n Lindsey Walko, a student enrolled in BU\u2019s Summer Theatre Institute\u2019s design program, started out as an actor in junior high but has since found that her real ambitions are backstage.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n The reason, says BUSTI Academic Program Head Emily Ranii (CFA\u201913), is that the great majority of young people who get into theater want to act. This year, for example, there are 70 students in the BUSTI performance track and four in the new design program.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people go into theater first as an actor, and then discover other things,\u201d Ranii says. \u201cSome discover it in high school and some discover it later.\u2026[But] there are very few high school summer programs that have a design component. So those students who have already figured it out don\u2019t have a lot of places to go for training.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFor a long time, there\u2019s been a notion that those who are on stage don\u2019t mix with those who are backstage,\u201d says Jon Savage, CFA assistant professor of theater and BFA Programs head, Design & Production. \u201cWe reject that flatly. We\u2019re collaborators, and we really try to bring those two worlds together within the BFA programs, so we wanted BUSTI to reflect that.\u201d<\/p>\n On a recent afternoon, students in the new program made collages under the supervision of teaching assistant Fiona Kearns (CFA\u201917), an undergraduate in design and production who attended BUSTI in 2011. They\u2019d read Melancholy Play<\/em> by Sarah Ruhl, and they were finding ways to illustrate its underlying meaning and emotion.<\/p>\n Katey Christianson, a high school senior from Seattle, says she started out in theater as an actress but \u201cgrew to feel more at home within the backstage elements.\u201d She has designed lights and sets, been on stage crews, written plays, and done hair and makeup, and in the fall she is going to direct her first play.<\/p>\n Jon Savage, CFA assistant professor of theater, teaches the new BUSTI design class.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI love that,\u201d she says. \u00a0\u201cThrough theater, I can create a whole world in my mind and be able to show it to others.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The students\u2019 collage project connects directly to the \u201cvision boards\u201d often used by designers and directors to help conceptualize a production, and uses clippings about everything from broad emotional subjects to specific suggestions for costumes and props. Each student next develops a design for Melancholy Play,<\/em> and later collaborates on a comprehensive model.<\/p>\n The program is also considered \u00a0a recruiting opportunity for the University\u2019s theater program, and, in fact, all four design students have shown interest in coming to BU next year as freshmen. As they work on their collages, they pepper Kearns with questions about students\u2019 workload, responsibilities, and role in productions.<\/p>\n Ranii notes that Kearns and another member of her BUSTI class are among current BU undergrads whose future on the design side first became clear during the summer program.<\/p>\n The four design students also act in the BUSTI summer performances, whose theme this year is the famous Isabella Stewart Gardner art heist. The four 20-minute original theater pieces on the subject take place tonight and tomorrow. The design students play onstage roles and also help out with production duties like running lights.<\/p>\n This year, all BUSTI students attended morning classes together, and the\u00a0design track students broke off for separate classes in the afternoon.<\/p>\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t know exactly how that would pan out, but we\u2019re finding that it truly is one big ensemble,\u201d says Ranii. \u201cThe design students are pushing themselves\u2026and becoming stronger designers through that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n