Behind the Scenes Capital Repertory Theatre *

Creating magic behind the scenes at theREP

Unseen hands, precise timing, and creative craft bring the stage to life

ALBANY — It’s easy for audiences to marvel at a powerful performance, a moving monologue, or a sweeping musical number, but none of it works without the careful, skill-intensive work backstage. The technicians, prop masters, set builders, lighting and video engineers, stagehands, and stage managers form the backbone of live theatre. Their timing and coordination make illusions feel real.

Beyond the lights of the MainStage at Capital Repertory Theatre, Prop Manager Vanessa VanZandt, Assistant Production Manager Luke Krauss, and Technical Coordinator Stephen Pelletier (among others) take the ordinary and make it extraordinary — ensuring that directors’ visions come to life and audiences are amazed.

As 2025 comes to an end, theREP has continued to weave bold stories, nurture new talent, and connect deeply with the Capital Region with a banner lineup, offering everything from intimate musicals to riveting dramas:

  • In March, “The Lehman Trilogy,” a sweeping, three-hour epic traced a family’s rise and fall over 150 years. Reviewers praised it as “a remarkable achievement of stage storytelling.”
  • In April, as part of its continuing commitment to new works, theREP premiered “Rosie Is Red and Everybody Is Blue” and hosted the 14th annual Next Act New Play Summit, a festival bringing together playwrights, actors, and the community for readings, workshops, and creative exchange.
  • During the summer, the award-winning musical “Once” brought actor-musicians performing live on stage and was especially poignant, marking the final show under Maggie Mancinelli-Cahill’s leadership.
  • This fall, “Becky Nurse of Salem,” a sharp, contemporary dark comedy that reimagined the legacy of the Salem witch trials and marked the beginning of Miriam Weisfeld’s tenure of Producing Artistic Director. Critics called it “fearless, funny, and unexpectedly moving.”
  • To close the year, “Murder for Two: Holiday Edition,” a fast-paced, two-actor musical mystery, wowed audiences with virtuoso comedy.

For each production, VanZandt gathers, organizes, and prepares the props actors will use including cups, letters, suitcases, and personal items, to ensure that everything is ready for quick placement or hand-off during performance.

In productions at theREP, props are often built from scratch or heavily modified to match the setting, tone, and era of the piece. For example, VanZandt found and adapted the wax figurine used in “Becky Nurse of Salem,” while Krauss and Pelletier worked their magic to make her eyes glow in pivotal scenes.

Wearing many hats, Krauss also serves as the sound engineer — managing over 30 audio channels in “Once” to help the instruments and actors work to deliver beautiful music. 

For “Murder for Two: Holiday Edition” Krauss was the lead coordinator for special effects alongside Pelletier, VanZandt, and the Collaborative Scene Shop to make the production’s tricks seamless in the two-men mystery musical. They spent weeks experimenting to create the perfect rigging system to create the illusion of chaos without damaging the props (or the actors!). In the production, items mysteriously fall over, props go flying, and it all works from multiple types of devices that are all fired by electrical relays that trigger commands on the lightboard while some are hand-operated by the backstage crew.

Pelletier’s work frames the emotional and visual tone of each scene — a single spotlight can draw attention, a soft wash can evoke a memory, and shadows can transform a modest living room into a brooding, menacing space. This visual shaping helps guide the audience’s attention and augment the storytelling in subtle but profound ways.

In a production with video, like “The Lehman Trilogy,” Krauss served as the video engineer. He and Pelletier coordinated the lighting and set design so that projections register properly, lighting doesn’t wash out images, and transitions happen smoothly.

A live theatre production relies on precise coordination to create magic: props must be placed just so, lights must shift at the exact second, and sound and music must begin perfectly. All of this happens under the direction of stage managers and technical crew, who call cues, operate lights and sound, manage scene changes, and ensure safety. Pelletier plays a critical role in making all these things happen.

In the end, the magic of a show at theREP isn’t just what you see onstage — it’s the many unseen hands working in concert to shape sight, sound, space, and atmosphere. It’s a testament to the power of craftspeople, technicians, and creative collaborators whose names you may never hear, but whose work you’ll never forget once the lights go down and the curtain falls.