For first-year students in the Rutgers Theater Department, performance opportunities begin in the classroom. During the day, students hone their skills in diction and movement, lay the groundwork for audition technique, and delve into foundational acting training. In the evenings, students then head to the theater, where they step into a different kind of role.
As first-year students settle into their lives on campus, the Theater Department requires them to learn not just about starring in a production, but about all of the behind-the-scenes prop-wrangling, costume-adjusting, and set-moving tasks that are necessary to keep a production running.
“It’s important for actors to know what everyone else does, and for students to observe rehearsals and get a sense of what’s expected of them,” says Theater faculty (and department alum) Eli Pauley. “It’s easy to think it’s all about you, but [in theater], you’re one piece of a very big machine.”
Although second-year acting student Aila Debira had attended a performing arts high school, she says her first year at MGSA challenged her in ways she hadn’t expected, from the depth and focus of her classes to her list of backstage responsibilities.
As part of her production assignments, Debira was tasked with moving set pieces, organizing props, and opening curtains for actors’ entrances and exits, often working with production students and other first-year acting students.
“Everybody is just as passionate as I am. Everybody is taking it just as seriously as I am.” –Acting student Aila Debira
“I had never had the experience of being backstage and not in the show,” she says. “[As an actor,] you hear all the time, ‘Thank the crew, they do a lot for you,’ but you don’t really know how much they do until you do it yourself. I have a closer dynamic with the stage managers now after working with them [last year].”
During a rehearsal for the fall 2025 production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals, Debira recalls the director presenting the cast with a collection of masks. The students were asked to don the masks and move throughout the space.
From the theater seats, Debira watched as the cast of then-second–year students transformed before her eyes, changing their movements and gestures to fit the character they had taken on.
“I had worked with masks in high school, but it was never really taken seriously by everyone in the room. You were always a little bit self-conscious,” she says. “I had never seen actors take it seriously, and it was really moving. A lot of the stuff we’re learning now, I’ve learned before. But now, everybody is just as passionate as I am. Everybody is taking it just as seriously as I am. It’s such a gift to be able to learn it again, but almost as if it’s for the first time.”
Earlier this semester, Debira put the knowledge she’d gained during her first year to the test. For her first main-stage performance, she would be playing Adela, a leading role in the department’s production of Federico García Lorca’s drama The House of Bernarda Alba. Though she recalls being nervous initially, Debira says her foundational training and the relationships she’s built with the cast and crew have made her feel more confident than ever.
“I thought I knew what I was doing in high school, but I absolutely feel more prepared now,” she says. “I’m no longer afraid to get creative and make big choices. As an actor, it’s easy to get caught up in whether you’re doing something ‘right,’ but I learned that in theater, there isn’t really a right and wrong. There’s only exploration.”