skygiants

The children's play idea is REALLY cute. We also had full support crews - costumes, props, set, tech - and how much time you spent depended for sure on the crew and the amount of work done; costumes and sets were generally the busiest, and I always did costumes where we tended to be WAY overambitious (our trial by fire was a production of Gypsy where we sewed dozens of stripper outfits by hand) so my perception of how much time we spent on each production is definitely a little skewed. But the actors were definitely there most of the same nights that we were, and often if they didn't have anything to do for their particular scene, they'd wander over and help out the other crews with painting or seam-ripping or whatever and we'd all think more warmly of the as a result.

The actors and producers/directors were also definitely top of the pecking order in our theatrical social strata as well, but we did have a fair bit of crossover between tech/set people and actors because there was a requirement to have worked a certain number of shows in order to officially become a full member of the high school Players organization. So we had a bunch of people who under other circumstances might have only participated if they got cast in something, but instead spent the rest of their time doing props or scenery because they wanted the show hours to count towards full memberships -- and each technical team had a crew head and a designer, and those roles also carried social cachet.