Kaylynn Sharp is heartbroken.

She’s in love.

She’s not afraid to do whatever it takes to get what she wants.

Or at least, her character is.

Walking on stage, acting in front of hundreds of people, singing 14 numbers isn’t all there is to performing. From behind the scenes, there are hours of preparation behind each line spoken.

“A lot of people think you can just kind of walk on stage and know the emotion behind your line, but you have to know the backstory and why your character does everything,” junior Kaylynn Sharp said. “Every relationship or every thought you have, just everything you do, is fueled by something, so you have to know that back story and what makes your character who they are.”

To get into the mindset of their character, Curtain Call Productions have to know their character— its personality, aspirations, goals— and they have to live them.

“Everything seems fake if you don’t know who your character is, and even sometimes when you know just the baseline of your characters it can still be hard to get into that mindset of them,” Kaylynn said. “My character Laurie [the female lead] is a completely real, genuine person, so if I’m not playing genuine genuinely, it’s all going to fall apart.”

To make acting seem authentic and real to the audience, Kaylynn, and the entire company, finds ways to relate to their role. Each actor finds a connection, a common attribute or goal, with their character to make their performance believable.

“My character, Curly [the male lead] likes to roam around and be free,” senior Noah Sexson said. “He does what he wants since he’s a cowboy, and that’s something I admire. It makes it easier for me to play him.”

But depending on the role, an actor can struggle to find common ground with their character. But there are ways to compensate for it.

“For the past three shows, I’ve been the villain,” senior Caleb Price said. “It’s hard to bring that [villain persona] out of myself, so everything I do on stage has to be something I create. To help, if I need to be angry at the beginning of a show, I’ll listen to intense music that has an angry tone to it to get me in that mindset.”

Besides listening to music, the cast studies their characters’ historical context, relationships with others, and geographical dialect to better understand their role. This type of study is called Dramaturgy.

“Dramaturgy is like figuratively putting on a pair of glasses that you look at the script through to help you decipher character traits, relationships, and the world within the play,” senior Tate Bass said. “It’s an ongoing process looking into your character and figuring out all these relationships because there really is a whole world the playwrights wrote, and you’re only getting a small glimpse, like a month’s time of it.”

The world of “Oklahoma!,” this year’s fall musical, is filled with cowboys and farmers so an important part the cast has to learn is dialect. And in their case, an old, southern accent.

“Right now we’re all doing weird country voices, but there is a process to find out what your character’s voice is going to be like,” Tate said. “Your accent comes from finding out the specific part of the state that they’re from, who they grew up with, their ancestry, environment they were raised in. It’s just like how we all talk differently because of how we were raised.”

An exercise the company does to practice their personality and accent before taking it to the stage is called “Character Movement.” It’s where they walk around and interact with each other in character.

“It helps me a ton,” Tate said. “After spending so much time messing around in character, you can start to feel a personal connection and understand them better. It makes it feel as though they’re your friend.”

Because each role performed takes so much practice and preparation, the actors can sometimes be left with a lasting impression from their characters.

“My character is very bold — she’s not afraid to plow people over just a little bit if she needs to,” Kaylynn said. “ Her realness comes from a place of knowing her own self-worth and moving on through life. I can relate to her, but I also think I have some things to learn from her too.”