TWHS senior Ivanna Stone is a Costume Designer and Seamstress for TWHS’s theater department. Currently, she is a Costume Co-Head for the theater’s upcoming musical, Big Fish, as well as participating in various events for Texas Thespian State Festival–TTSF for short. On top of all this, she also has previous experience doing costumes for the theater, having been a member of Little Women’s costume run crew as well as Yasmina Reza’s Art costume assistant.

     Ivanna started costumes her sophomore year of high school, discovering it through her friends Jaden Blackwell-Frank and Marissa Miller, both of whom also part of the costume department. They were in their Theater 1 class when “they were talking about Midsummer and Les Mis, and I was like, I want to get into all of those costumes,” inspiring her to join, and later a love of costuming. 

     This love is caused through everything that goes into costuming, “I love fashion, and I think costuming is a gateway to fashion. It’s really fun with all the people and the different styles and characters they have to create.” Overall, making costumes is something that Ivanna truly loves.

     Ivanna tells us that “Costumes are so much fun, and other tech positions are too, regardless of the role that you’re playing, it’s just the community that makes it so great and fun.”

Publicity co-head, Vallen Tran, is a sophomore at TWHS this year. Vallen initially started tech by doing costumes for a McCullough show, Nose for the News, because he “just wanted to be a part of the show.” Later, when he finally made it to the highschool and continued doing tech, he became involved in various tech crews, including Little Women’s Props Crew, then Sound of Music’s Hair Crew and Publicity Crew. After “Sound of Music,” Vallen became a Co-Head for “Art” by Yasmina Reza, and is currently a Co-Head for the upcoming show, “Big Fish.”

Vallen does publicity because, as he puts it, “I love getting to utilize my artistic abilities because I’m not in an art class, it’s nice being able to do something with it. I also like recording videos and editing!” And, on top of this, he gets to have the fun of publicizing the show by “getting to do fun creative stuff while also being able to gush about the show to all my friends.” 

However, he does note some sad truths about being a technician. “Crew list comes out, a ‘congratulations guys!’ and the topic changes very quickly. Comically fast. But, the cast list comes out? ‘OH MY GOD CONGRATULATIONS [so and so]!’ The buzz is bigger, there’s more tension surrounding the cast list. I get it, there are more actors, but the people usually acknowledging the crew list are fellow crew members.” This is typical, not just in highschool level theater, but also in the professional level as well. Broadway fans know Idina Menzel as the original Elphaba in “Wicked,” but how many can name the original Lighting or Sound Designer of the show? 

As Vallen puts it, “This may be because acting is more sought after: it’s wanted. To someone who doesn’t know theatre that well, they may not know what techies do.” But still, “it is clear that technicians do not get recognition for their achievements as much as actors.” Still, that doesn’t deter him from being a technician one bit, and his favorite thing regarding tech is his “fellow technicians. They’re so funny.” 

However, Vallen didn’t go into theatre expecting to become a technician “I went into theatre thinking I’d be solely an actor.” But, this deviation from his initial plan “It’s such a different world from acting, for me it’s way less physical and challenges me creatively.” Furthermore, he compares the two, noting that “although, like acting, it’s as fun as you make it. You can choose to do the bare minimum and get by, or you can go above and beyond, Plus Ultra.”