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Setting the Stage at the Alys: The Performance Behind the Scenes
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| Caron Thornton calls it “transparency,” and if you’ve ever attended
a performance at the Alys Stephens Center, you know what she means.
Then again, maybe you don’t.
Because behind the flowers, the hors d’oeuvres, and the facade of
elegant ease, Thornton and her staff work at a nearly feverish pace
to orchestrate scores of performances each month—all the while striving to make their work invisible, the unseen part of a seamless evening.
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This, according to the Alys Stephens Center’s executive director, is what transparency is all about.
“No one should see you sweat,” Thornton says. “Ever.”
“No matter how chaotic it is backstage, we never want the audience to be aware of the work behind the performance,” Thornton says. “We want them to have the best night of their lives—which means not seeing the center staff working frantically. It should look to the public like it’s all great fun.”
And in the final hours before a performance, the team of behind-the-scenes players multiplies exponentially to include technical support crews to set up sound and lights, plus drivers, florists, and caterers. It’s a unique line of work, with as many as 200 professionals putting in thousands of hours toward a single event, which—like an ice sculpture or a sand castle—is as fleeting as it is memorable.
“It’s really a sense of magic you’re seeking when you pay for a ticket,” Thornton says. “Our patrons are paying for two or three hours of enchantment, really—to come in and have a drink in the lounge, walk through a beautiful lobby, then hear a lovely performance. The whole sense of magic hinges on feeling that every step of the evening is effortless.
“And that means a good deal of hard work behind the scenes.”
In conversation, Thornton is ebullient, graceful, and precise as a station-master, equal parts warm hostess and no-nonsense CEO. Which is probably the perfect combination for her position, since she’s as responsible for the center’s bottom-line as for its bonhomie. While Thornton acknowledges that her formal education helps with budgeting and fund-raising—she holds a master’s degree in arts administration from Indiana University—she insists that an abiding love of the arts is the fundamental credential for her position.
“They say you’ll know when you have a passion for something because you can’t do anything else,” she says. “I think you prepare your whole life for a career in the arts. It’s not about a college degree or a program of study—it’s more about never being able to get enough of the arts. The key isn’t formal education, it’s passion.”
An artist’s special requests can range from the reasonable—such as meatless dressing-room food for a vegetarian—to the ludicrous. Performers have actually specified particular colors for their limousines (gray, black, or white, with various shades of upholstery), for example, and have demanded up to 20 bottles of Perrier and three cartons of Kool cigarettes backstage. But if such capricious demands strain Thornton’s patience, she shows no sign of it. “We try to keep the performers fed, happy, and free of stress from the moment they arrive at the airport,” she says. “We have wonderful relationships with artists across the country because we really treat them well. The word gets around.”
Although Thornton refuses to name the worst culprits (she will only say that “the writers are particularly neurotic”), she happily recounts George Carlin’s booking at the Alys Stephens Center as a bright illustration by contrast.
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“George Carlin zipped in five minutes before showtime in a rental car, by himself, and walked right out on the stage,” Thornton remembers. “No backstage chatter, nothing. And after the show he zoomed out before the final applause died down. I found out later that he’d made an unannounced visit to the center that afternoon to get a sense of the place and spent some time talking with students backstage, but I never met him.
“I guess it proves that his stage persona is really authentic. Absolutely no pretense. And no cases of Perrier, either.”
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| The Moment of Magic
Thornton says that no matter how long and hard she and her staff work to prepare for a performance—and no matter how many challenges and peculiarities they encounter along the way—they’re always thrilled to see the payoff of their efforts when a performer walks out on stage. Nothing can equal the beauty of live performance, Thornton says. “It brings out a relationship between performer and audience that you can’t achieve on a recording.”
Anyone skeptical about how a performance at the center could rival a quality recording needs only to follow Thornton for a brief tour of the Jemison Concert Hall. Since she was actively involved in designing the facility, Thornton makes an able guide to its engineering and construction. Incredibly, the hall capable of seating more than 1,300 concertgoers is acoustically designed so that an unamplified human voice rings to the back rows. Consequently, a strong tenor—or a single instrument such as a piano, cello, or violin—can carry the hall, even with a capacity crowd. The hall’s sound design is so sensitive, in fact, that performers using electric amplification require the hall to be “tuned” as though it were a musical instrument itself: Sometimes special draperies that line the walls are pulled out to soften the tone of brass instruments or amplified music.
At UAB, such references to a global presence are most often heard in conversations about the medical fields. Thornton is nonplussed by the parallel. “The hospital is where you go when you’re sick,” she laughs. “This is art. “If the Alys Stephens Center can add a real distinction in the arts to UAB’s reputation, I think we’ve done something special.” Meanwhile, back in Thornton’s office, the phone is ringing—as it has been for most of the past hour—and the fax machine is chattering. Thornton seems as much at home in the noisy office as she does in the grand concert hall; both are parts of a normal day’s work.
“It’s tiring, but fabulous,” she says. “I wouldn’t take any other job in the world.”
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