Three generations find fulfillment backstage as props, costume directors

In the world of theater, Maggie Neumayer of Arlington Heights knows her place: backstage, managing the props like her mother and her grandmother before that.

Neumayer just finished her latest stint as assistant prop manager for Harper College's production of Oscar Wilde's classic, "The Importance of Being Earnest," which closed Sunday.

She worked as an assistant to -- who else -- her mother, Thersesa Neumayer, who has managed props for the 1ast 12 years at St. James Productions, and at St. Viator High School for the last five years.

Neumayer's grandmother, Mary Woods of Arlington Heights, has made a name for herself as a costumer, both with the St. James productions and more recently at St. Viator, where officials dedicated their costume room in her honor last month.

Maggie Neumayer, a 2005 Hersey High School graduate, now is taking the family avocation one step further: she is majoring in theater at Harper, and plans to further her studies at Columbia College in Chicago this fall.

Increasingly, Neumayer is finding theater to be a family affair. For "Earnest," she found herself working for director John Marquette, after working under his son, Kyle, at Hersey where he serves as theater director.

Neumayer continues to find satisfaction working behind the scenes, adding that there is more to props than meets the eye.

"Sometimes what's going on backstage rivals what's happening on stage," Neumayer says.

She points to her most recent play, "Earnest," an aristocratic comedy which takes place in late 19th century London. She and her mother researched some of the props to make sure they captured the Victorian era.

For the proper Victorian cucumber tea sandwiches, seen in the first act, they went to great efforts to make them look authentic.

"I wanted the cucumber sandwiches to be the same as they were eaten for the traditional English tea in the 1890s," Neumayer says, "so that meant the bread -- and the cucumbers -- have to be cut very thin so that you can see light shine through them."

Harper officials said the Victorian details found by the mother and daughter team, added just the right touch to the production, which featured all Harper students.