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The tech crew stayed out of the limelight, and busied themselves with all the backstage work that kept the show running smoothly while the actors did their thing on stage. Everyone was expected to pitch in to do backstage stuff to some extent, of course, or else they'd never get a production off the ground. They were a high school club, not some sort of well off production company that could afford dedicated staff members for things like costumes and makeup.

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So the teacher would order the costumes after they all worked out what the production was and what kind of costumes everyone needed for it, and several of the girls would do the makeup, for example, even though they were also acting in the shows. Even the biggest divas of the club understood that much, and chipped in one way or another.

But on the night of the show itself, they still needed people dedicated to running light and sound.

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Theoretically some of the extras who weren't on for that many scenes could cover it between them, but it was kind of a hassle to get up to the birds' nest where the equipment was, and even worse to get down again. It was a pretty technical job too, so you had to actually learn quite a bit to do it properly. In light of all that, it tended to be easier to have a few people dedicated to those roles running them.

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The alternative was trying to teach a wider number of bit players who had no interest in that sort of thing to begin with, so...

Henry was glad for it, since it created a niche that he could occupy. He liked the birds' nest because it was high up above the stage. If things weren't busy, he could actually watch the show himself from his perch up there. It wasn't quite the same as being in the audience, but sometimes he actually preferred that too.

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Seeing the actors from a bird's eye view made for some surprisingly funny moments, even during parts that weren't supposed to be funny.

But as for the question of what made him join the drama club... "W-Well," he said, "the teacher who runs it really helped me out... And last year she couldn't find enough people for her tech crew, so she asked me if I could do it for a little while." It wasn't actually supposed to be a permanent arrangement at all, at first.

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Henry would just be subbing in, providing a warm body and a semi capable pair of hands, until they could rope in someone else. At the time he was still a part of the student council, but that had been his parents' idea, of course. He hadn't really liked working with the student council. It was filled with the kind of gung ho students that really wanted to get somewhere, and it just felt like an extension of the competitive atmosphere between the top students in class.

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Henry saw those guys enough in the usual course of his academic life, and to have to spend his lunch breaks and more time after school with them was really draining. Plus they all wanted to be leaders, and were all used to being in charge, so inevitably they fought a lot among themselves, which made it take twice as long to get anything done.

The drama club wasn't like that. Sure, there were the kids who always wanted the big parts and would do almost anything to get them.

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The amount of actual drama among the drama club actors wasn't small. But Henry could stay out of it if he wanted to, and the fact that he was a tech meant that most people respected that and left him alone. Or maybe they just thought him beneath them, but frankly that was also fine. It wasn't as if Henry was joining the club to get noticed.

But there was a sense of camaraderie, even with the dramatics of the more egotistical members.

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And despite Henry being as quiet and out of the way as he was, he felt it too. The energy on the nights they performed, in particular, always made Henry feel like he was a part of something special despite the fact that no one could see him or what he was doing. And even if his parents might not have understood it -- even if Henry himself didn't really understand it -- they had a lot of really talented people in the club too.

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Even he felt touched after listening to Cindy reading off a monologue, and Bruce could get a laugh out of any crowd with his antics. It felt nice to be able to support them too, when he did his work as a techie.

"A teacher asked you to join, huh? I guess that makes sense." Annette gave him another once over. He might have felt more insulted if it wasn't so true, but... well, it was what it was, wasn't it?

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If he was being honest with himself, even Henry knew that he would never have contemplated joining a theater club if it weren't for the fact that a teacher had nearly begged him to do it. He might not even have done it for a teacher he liked less. But then, he had never imagined that a role like the light and sound crew existed in those parts. He had always thought that everyone had to be an actor and that was just it.

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It made sense, now that he had been there for over a year, and had seen the amount of actual non acting work that went into a production. Aside from the light and sound crew, there were also the kids who worked on the sets, making backgrounds and props and things like that. Some of them were also the actors, who then used their time outside of rehearsals to put even more work in. These tended to be the actors who didn't care as much about being front and center spotlight.

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Though a couple of the more prominent boys also did their stint building backgrounds. But there were also kids who only did that sort of thing, the way that Henry only ran lights and occasionally sound if he had to cover for someone.

Fortunately, that wasn't compulsory either. As much as Henry enjoyed being a part of the club, he didn't think he could be trusted around the kinds of tools that the backgrounds and prop crew worked with.

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There did seem to be a lot of heavy lifting involved too, and he definitely wasn't any good at that. Just about the only thing he could have done was painting, and they had enough people to do that without having to babysit someone with no real aptitude for it like Henry.

"Mallory says you're pretty good," said Annette. She was idly petting her dog, who had laid itself down, and was resting its head on her leg now.

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"She wasn't sure about you at first, you know, because they'd tried three other kids before you signed on. But you learned fast, that was what she said. And you have a good memory for details, so you don't miss cues and things like that."

Henry blinked, and she laughed at his response. "Why do you look so surprised? She must have told you that at some point, right? Mallory's not the type to not give credit where it's due."