The Room Where It Happens: How Trapier Theater Has Transformed NCS and St. Albans Theater

Trapier Theater is home to a half-dozen productions each year, but perhaps more importantly, it stands as the heart of the NCS and STA theater program. Anna Youngkin '18 described it last fall as a place where, for 50 years, theatrically minded students could "collaborate creatively, make new friends, and explore their own individual expression."

 

Prior to the construction of Trapier, pro- ductions were scattered around the Close: a variety of gyms; NCS's Rosedale campus; the Cathedral's outdoor amphitheater; even the College of Preachers, east of the Cathedral. That changed in May 1968, after St. Albans completed its New Wing and Billy Budd became the first play staged at the new St. Albans Theater.

 

Suddenly the two schools had a "center of theater activity on the Close," in the words of former theater department chair Ted Walch. The theater's actual location was far less important, he added, than that all the diffused theatrical energy now had one home.

 

More than 200 productions have since been staged in the theater, which was dedicated in February 1970 to honor Aida Trapier, the widow of a St. Albans alumnus. Theater Department Chair Mark Bishop says the choice of productions each season is guided in part by the dimensions of the space.

 

"We have to be resourceful: There is no orchestra pit, no fly, no wings, which helps us not run away with something that's going to be too large to achieve," Bishop says. "It also encourages us to be very efficient in what we do."

 

No wings means that the dressing rooms are directly beneath the theater's Brylawski Stage, in a large space that serves also as the workshop in the runup to showtime. Set construction has to finish about 10 days before the first show so that the costumes and dressing tables can move in.

 

"Every show, the sets are a little different, and it's wonderful to see what they'll come up with," says theater teacher Chris Snipe. "The Rehearsal at Versailles—I loved coming to rehearse in that" in 2014.

 

Trapier is a sizable theater, accommodating more than 300 audience members, and that gives teachers the opportunity to work with actors on projecting the voice in a natural-sounding way. There are no microphones used in NCS-STA plays, and they're not really needed, Bishop says, not since a gift from E. Fulton Brylawski STA '43 delivered major improvements to the acoustics in 2009. (Mikes are used with musicals, he adds.)

 

Lighting improvements were also a part of those renovations, and curricular offerings have taken advantage. "We're at a place now in our design program where students are designing our productions, which is really pretty exciting," Bishop says. Taliyah Emory-Muhammad '19, for instance, created the lighting design in four consecutive NCS-STA productions; she also pursued an independent-study project in lighting design last fall.

 

Such an educational path didn't exist 50 years ago, but the arrival of Trapier Theater helped make it, and many other theatrical dreams, come to life.