The Ultimate Backstage Pass: How the magic happens at the Kauffman and other top venues in town
In a nondescript building off 18th St., there is a room with a thirty-foot-tall ancient Persian statue. It looks like stone and has a tight-lipped expression carved on its face. The statue leaned against a wall as if it was bored with your questions. My guide, Steve Cochran, let me know that it’s a set piece for the opera Turandot.
Cochran works for the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local Union 31. He and his coworkers make imaginary worlds into reality for places like the Kauffman, the Lyric Opera of Kansas City, and a host of other venues. If an audience needs to be transported to 12th-century Persia for Turandot or the Land of Sweets in The Nutcracker, these people make that happen.
Somewhere, a writer came up with weird thoughts. Designers, directors, and artists took those words and added their imagination. Whatever they dream ends up as a blueprint in Cochran’s workshop. Until he and his crew lay their fingers on the idea, everything is just a wish—His people are the genie in the warehouse that grants those wishes.
The workshop starts in the room with the giant statue. Here, a movie screen-sized canvas is laid down on the floor, and artists begin to paint the backdrop. For example, the backdrop of the opera Don Giovanni by Mozart could depict the rolling clouds and soft hills of 17th-century Spain. The backdrop for the opera The Shining could be a hedge maze or the Overlook Hotel. They spend hours getting the vision right.
Past the statue, Cochran took me to the woodworking portion of the shop. On a worktable that was long enough to comfortably hold 15 people, a blueprint was carefully laid out. Cochran has worked for Local 31 for thirty years and wears a variety of hats—master carpenter, assistant prop head for the KC Ballet, and department head for props for the Lyric Opera. To his trained eye, he sees that he needs to build a window that sits on a bench like a book nook where you can watch the birds and think wistfully.
“So, you have to build boxes?” I ask.
“Pretty much,” Cochran says.
They have completed the first window, and I can see how the set piece is a hundred times more complicated than it looks.
First off, all sets have to be transported to venues via truck. Limited space and height means many pieces must be disassembled. Cochran shows me special metal tabs that lock the window into the base underneath. Think of it as the best-made IKEA furniture you’ve ever seen; It’s fine woodworking with a touch of practicality.
Safety is also always an issue for stagehands and performers. For some pieces, Cochran has to build secret compartments to hide fifty-pound stage weights to stabilize a piece of scenery. The audience sees none of this and instead fixates on the wistful-thinking lady looking out the window to the Spanish countryside.
Our next room was wardrobe, which looked like the largest and jankiest thrift store you’ve ever visited.
“Someone is always getting stabbed or shot,” Cochran says as he shows me a rack of bloody dresses. Occult robes, peasant garb, flowing gowns—Pick a fashion style, and you’ll find it in this thrift shop. Maybe you need some casual footwear. No problem, they can be found right next to the set of French Revolution shoes, which number enough for a small peasant uprising.
Honestly, if Cochran had to take a bathroom break, I was completely prepared to play dress up while he was gone, which would have gone well as we then headed into the prop room.
The prop room looks like the ‘Room of Requirement’ from the Harry Potter series. I would bet somewhere in that room is Rowena Ravenclaw’s lost Diadem. Imagine a warehouse-sized room with low seven-foot ceilings with ductwork snaking throughout—Four pianos sit next to Victorian high-backed chairs, which are also next to an 1850s wagon wheel. A bamboo birdcage with fake parrots is near a complete set of muskets and ten stone-age spears.
To see all the work and the materials that go into a show can be overwhelming, but it still doesn’t prepare you for the set room: our last stop. Stacked like eight-foot-tall sheets of drywall were all the scenery pieces. All made from foam and expertly painted, Roman villas were next to gothic graveyards.
Cochran’s passion began to show as he described the work that each set took. He used industry terms like rakes (stands for a choir) or meat racks (where lights hang). He easily dropped the names of operas, ballets, and shows he’s been involved with over a thirty-year career, having served as a stagehand for some notable figures, such as Metallica (more than once).
Cochran and the crew do more than create entire worlds for an eager audience. Once built, they are taken to a venue like the Kauffman and make everything work. You have 100% seen Cochran on stage, but, because of his skill, you’ve never known. When action needs to happen, it’s Cochran’s unseen hands that bring that to fruition.
“We were doing The Shining, and there’s the famous bathtub scene. Well, in the opera, the tub that the actress was in had to come out with the lights off. I had to hit that mark every time because it would ruin everything if she wasn’t in the right spot,” Cochran says as he recounts one of his more stressful moments.
He then showed me the terrifying image of an actress in a naked bodysuit made to look like a desiccated corpse with her decaying breasts swinging down to her waist.
“And I had to make everything stable,” he adds. “So, I’m squatting behind the tub, holding on so nothing moves while she grabs the kid.”
Local 31 doesn’t build all the sets that are performed around town—some are traveling shows that arrive prebuilt. But once they arrive, Cochran goes to work and makes what you see as immersive and believable as possible. Dressed in black like Johnny Cash, their customer is the audience, and the measure of their success is to never be noticed.
