A group of students, donors and media attended a load-in observation for Les Misérables at the Indiana University Auditorium on Tuesday.
Of the 50 or so gathered for the preview event, many were theater production students attending IU.
Ryan Gardner, the production stage manager for the show, held a Q-and-A session about what all goes in to making a show as large as Les Misérables possible.
“To work on like a big, epic musical of this size is exciting every single day,” he said. “Kind of with that exactly, it comes with a lot of challenges as well, all the moving parts.”
It takes 11 semi-trailers to move the show from city to city, with one trailer entirely filled with costumes.
Maintaining a staff upwards of 90 members also presents challenges, with many rotating out of the show every year. The Bloomington stop marks the end of the second year of touring for this production and will see nine company members being replaced before the next show stop.
Read more: Les Misérables bringing three IU alumni back to campus
“It takes a toll on us too, because we're having to do rehearsals during the day and then perform the show at night,” he said. “And so for the past three weeks, we've either been in studio spaces or even on stage preparing those actors.”
For Gardner, working on a show of this scale is nothing but rewarding.
“This is a show that's 38 years old, and we're still able to come around the country and touch so many people,” he said. “And we also love how people say they saw it 20 years ago, and now they get to take their kids to see the show.”
Les Misérables premieres Tuesday night and runs until Sept. 29.
