Nearly two dozen stagehands from the Dayton area are preparing for one of the region’s biggest events in years — Super Bowl XLVI and its halftime show featuring Madonna on Sunday at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

Building the staging, sets, and lighting and sound rigs for the halftime show requires the skills of about 500 people, including riggers, electricians and carpenters, said Ken Rice, business representative for the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 66 in Dayton.

“They have pretty well exhausted the state of Indiana,” he said.

The Super Bowl is typically one of the world’s biggest stages. Last year’s game was the most watched program in television history, with a reported 162.9 million U.S. viewers.

Indianapolis is about 117 miles west of Dayton.

Stagehands assigned to the event are working a minimum of 10 hours a day and are being paid for 85 hours a week at a rate of $24 per hour, Rice said.

“It’s big bucks over there right now and these people are happy. They are probably making roughly $2,100 a week,” he said.

Some local stagehands will have spent a month in Indianapolis before they return home on Feb. 9.

IATSE Local 66 has 56 members, including 30 to 40 full-time stagehands. Other members are working on the three-week run of “Jersey Boys” at the Schuster Performing Arts Center, as well as the Shrine Circus on Friday through Sunday at the University of Dayton Arena.

Rice said he will draw stagehands from other cities and co-op students from Wright State University’s theater department for larger productions such as WWE wrestling, which can require 125 workers.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2419 or dlarsen@DaytonDailyNews.com.