Seventeen-year-old Elissa Wheeler stands in the doorway of the auditorium at Capital High School, hands at her hips, dark hair dangling around her neck. "We can fit, I think, 387 people in here," the actress says, surveying the landscape of chairs.

"Can I get the house lights?"

The lights come on.

A pair of girls go through dance steps on a stage pockmarked with the dents and bruises that come from moving heavy sets on-stage, off-stage, stage-left, stage-right. Snippets of gaffer tape haven't quite come off. A boy sits at a piano off-stage, going through chords over and over. Not one note, not one step will be missed.

"There's music pretty much all the time here," says Elissa, a musical theater aficionada. "Let's go back this way."

Back this way is a hallway, passing the weights and the thick cables that control the curtains. This way is a small corridor with cinderblock walls and white florescent lights. This way is a staircase.

She jets up a flight of stairs. Her feet bounce off the steps, and she disappears into a black corridor. This is the sound room. When you close this door, and this door, it's soundproof. She keeps moving, walking into a similarly jet-black room, the "light graveyard," full of lenses and lamps, most sitting upright, silent.

"These are the gels, and these are the gel frames," Elissa says, pointing to an open chest behind her, thin colored transparencies splayed out.

The keyboard, she explains, is where the lighting is controlled. Her fingers dance over the keypad with grayed-out, powered-off keys. This is state of the art, she says, just like at the Lensic, where she is a technical intern. This is the spotlight, which her brother once worked during a show.

And this is the catwalk, the actress says, looking up at a metal plank that extends perilously into open space over the theater. This is where we climb out and adjust the lighting manually; this is not a place where you want to look down. "You can see through the floor," she says.

The next room over is full of costumes. Row after row, rack after rack of pants, shirts, kimonos, puffy dresses, short skirts, short skirts made of towels (which she made), dresses made of Bubble Wrap (which she also made), dresses made of duct tape (also, her creation).

"Pretty much anything you'd need for any show," Elissa says, thumbing through a pile of fabrics and clothing.

• • •

The first audition. She didn't know the teachers. She didn't know what to expect.

She did know she had always wanted to be part of Capital High drama — ever since she watched an uncle perform. When you walk the hallway into the theater, you can see rows of head shots, the mugs of cast and crew for shows past. She knew she wanted her face on that wall.

The first audition, she was terrified. "The seniors," she says, "were like gods and goddesses. I wanted to be like them."

She earned a role in the chorus of Les Misérables.

• • •

Elissa tries to guess how many hours she spends in the theater. She starts counting. During show season she, and her compatriots, arrived at 7 in the morning and didn't leave until 10 at night. During the summer, they cleaned the theater and got it ready for show season again. It's easier to estimate the time she has spent at home than the hours she has spent here, in this cavernous space.

A few friends nod in agreement. They were here, like, forever. Dozens of them, each putting their hands into productions. Whether it was building fireplaces, whether it was painting the stone work on a set-piece castle, whether it was the physically demanding work of big dance numbers, whether it was breaking down the backdrops, they were all there.

When "Plan B became Plan C," when they were "go go go," they were there.

"They absolutely are a family," says drama teacher Bernadette Peña. "In my experience, that just comes from theater — when you have to do the things you do on stage, you have to develop a trust with the people who are involved with you, which creates strong bonds. It's a nice thing for them to have."

Elissa has an advantage: She has parents who saw their daughter get passionate and who followed it. Her mom, Jodie, helped with fundraising and costumes. Her dad, Bill, assisted with sets. He did the pyrotechnics on Dorothy, sparking up and smoking up the family's backyard in preparation.

"It can make you feel burnt out," Elissa says. "Then you get on stage and the elements blend together, and you create something beautiful."

• • •

The actress walks down a flight of stairs. This cinderblock wall is reserved for seniors, where they each get to put their coda on high school — they inscribe something, some initials or a note about the productions they worked on. She keeps walking.

After graduating Friday, she will attend Santa Fe Community College, where she's already taking film crew classes. Then she wants to go to The University of New Mexico and to get her master's degree at the University of California, Los Angeles.

For now, she sits in the hallway, looking at the case with the trophies she's helped earn. No more state competitions in Farmington, no more interscholastic rivalries, no more notebooks full of waist sizes and seams and photos of which outfit belongs to whom, no more standing upright when the judges come by, hoping, praying the costume is not only on the right person, but the costume is also staying on that person.

"With Dorothy," she says, "There was a little depression. That was the last big high school show, and you're sad that this chapter is over. Yeah, I was Dorothy. Yeah, I had a great time. Yeah, I learned a lot.

"Now," she says, pausing briefly, "how can I take that and expand on it?"