Creating a Scene

"Can I speak to Stan Wallace, please?"

"I'm sorry, he left at noon," said the woman on the other end.

"Could I reach him in the morning?"

"Absolutely!" she says. "Anytime after 3:30 a.m." She adds with a laugh, "He's, our little drama elf."

Stan Wallace is the master carpenter for the drama department. He dresses only in blue. "Green is the college color, so I wouldn't wear that." And he doesn't pack a lunch. "I get all I can out of my bowl of cereal in the morning."

Why the early hours? "I can't really think why I did it," he says of the day 12 years ago when he first decided to start coming in early in the morning. "Nobody else keeps those hours." Whatever his hours, Wallace's work in the Hopkins Center is exceptional, indis- pensable. "What he builds is as fine as anything in New York," says Keith Hochreiter, technical director for the drama department, pointing to a life-sized pageant wagon Wallace just built. In his 27 years, Wallace has built hundreds of sets.

With his odd hours and his simple, tight-lipped smile, Wallace admits the only tough part about the job are the times when students rush by his work- room on the way to a class in Spaulding auditorium. "It gets a little hairy crossing the hall."

Wallance is the guy most popular with the theater set.