Steve Garner explains the passion behind his position.
Work to live or live to work? When is it time to take that chance? As console programmer Steve Garner explains, he fell in love with the industry as a kid and then left it all behind. But, as fate would have it, the Siren of the Theatre, Lor-tel, kept calling him, so he packed his bags and moved to New York. Twenty-plus years later, he has found his niche and he’s back in the theatre doing what he loves most. Life is funny like that… sometimes, if we’re lucky, we can get back to where we started.
PLSN: How did you get started in the industry?
Steve Garner: My parents turned me on to it when I was a kid, and in college I earned a BA in theatre arts. I studied at C.W. Post with Lee Watson, way back when. So I am one of the few programmers with a formal theatre education, I think. When talking to my buddies (other programmers) I’ve found that most of them come from rock ‘n’ roll. So I had this BA in theatre arts, and it was weird because I got married right after college and dropped out of the business for 12 years. I was working at a college and started helping some people with the lights and I really liked doing it, so I said to myself, “Let’s see if we can do it.”
I moved to New York in ‘85, and here I am.
Q: New York is considered a sort of Mecca for theatre – how did you break into the business once you got there?
A: I got lucky. I moved into an SRO (single room occupancy) on West End Avenue with no sort of prospects whatsoever. I just knew I wanted to try it before I got too old. One day, I walked around the corner, and the Equity Library Theatre was right there, so I walked in to say hello and it turned out their house manager had just quit.
After we were done talking they asked if I was interested in a job and I said, “Sure.” They said, “And, oh, we’re doing an electric strike tonight, do you want to come down and do that?” I said, “Sure.”
And then, at the gig, someone said, “Hey, we’re doing a show next week, do you want to come down and help us with the lights on that?”
And it kind of just rolled from there.
Q: It sounds like you put yourself in the right place at the right time.
A: It was being in the right place at the right time, making the right connections, and being able to do the work.
Q: You’re primarily a programmer, aren’t you?
A: I’m a programmer. I do the occasional LD thing, but I consider myself a programmer. I’m there to work with a good lighting designer. That’s what I love doing, and I’m very happy with my niche.
Q: How did you make the jump into that discipline?
A: I worked as a production electrician for a while — I worked with Rob Strohmeier for a while and did all his fashion shows, and I was the house electrician at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, and just at that time moving lights started coming out. The designers I worked with were interested in using moving lights, but they didn’t have access to anybody who knew how to use them. But they trusted me and let me learn it on their dime, so to speak. So I started working with moving lights, and it gave me a chance to get back into the design end of it. Although I don’t consider myself a designer, I love helping a good designer do what he wants to do. I think it’s my strength. I guess I was lucky enough to be there when moving lights started coming out and I had the background to be able to do it.
Q: What was the first show you did?
A: The very first show I did was called Lip Service on MTV, and it was the perfect training ground because it was a show that involved kids lip-synching and I literally had two minutes to program each song they were going to do. All MTV wanted was lights to flash. Anything I gave them above and beyond that was a bonus. The show ran for two months, and anytime the cameras weren’t on, I was practicing. It was a golden opportunity — 12 hours a day — to get the hang of this thing.
Q: What kind of console were you using at that point?
A: I was using an ETC Expression 2X because that was my bread and butter board and what I was using for all my theatre gigs.
Q: That must have given you a tremendous amount of insight into how to work with moving light because there were no pre-built personalities or fixture palettes.
A: I had to do it all from scratch. Luckily, it’s all lighting when you get down to it. It’s funny because a lot of up-and-coming programmers now are really good with computers but they don’t know lighting as well, it seems.
Q: That makes sense because some don’t have that theatre background. Did you continue to work for MTV?
A: I did a lot of MTV stuff. I did a couple of their New Year’s Eve shows and a lot of their TRL stuff — not for the run-of-the-mill stuff, but they brought me in for the big shows — like, Destiny’s Child was coming in to do a couple songs.
At the time, I was still doing fashion. And then I started to get some major TV work and I started working for New York City Lights. Chuck Noble is the designer who I tend to follow. I do a lot work for Chuck; we do Millionaire, Chain Reaction, and I’ve done the Jerry Lewis Telethon with him for six years.
Q: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire helped redefine how game shows are done. What was it like to be around for that?
A: It was pretty cool. I wasn’t the original programmer — my buddy Dave Arch started it.
It was the summer of ’99, I think, and I went up to visit Dave because he was doing this game show. I sat around for an hour and I thought it looked interesting, but it was so intense that there wasn’t much room to hang out with him. When the show moved to ABC Studio One, he couldn’t do it, so he told them that I knew it because I had been there for an hour before. It was a real interesting couple of years there.
Q: And you’ve been doing it ever since?
A: Yeah. It’s a great gig. I work September to December, from nine o’clock to six o’clock. It’s like a day job.
Q: How much of it changes?
A: It’s an odd job. They could maybe get away with having a B-level programmer, but, once in a while, they’ll come and say, “Today, we are doing this shot and you’ve got five minutes.” So, Chuck and I are reacting to what producers come to us with. Like this week on Chain Reaction, we are doing a special shot because there is a sponsorship and there is no time (for programming changes). In TV, like everywhere else, time is money. I’m there for the what-if situation. Plus, it’s a difficult thing to run. I’ll talk to my subs, and they typically won’t stop sweating for a couple of months after they do a show, because a third of the cues you know, a third of the cues the director calls, and a third of the cues are dictated by the show. It’s not a show where the stage manager is saying, “Hit the Go button.” I literally play the show, because it gives me an advantage to know what I am going to do next.
Q: Who’s sweating more: your subs or the contestants?
A: It’s a toss up. I think I went the first few years at a constant state of attention. Now, I can relax a little bit. It’s pretty cut and dry now.
Q: What are the challenges of working on different game shows like Chain Reaction?
A: The very first thing Chuck said to me was that we couldn’t do any Millionaire cues. So it was an interesting challenge to not fall back on some of the things that had worked so well for us. In TV, you’re restricted, so you get the good things that work and tend to go to them, and all of a sudden, some of them are gone. I think we came up with some good stuff.
Q: It seems that the game show stuff keeps you pretty busy. What else are you doing?
A: I finally got my feet back in the theatre market, which I am ecstatic about. I’ve done four shows in the last couple of years. I did the second half of Good Vibrations, Awake and Sing, Julius Caesar, and most recently, Dr. Seuss’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas: The Musical. I’m loving it because I have all these skills I’ve built up with moving lights and now I get to use them in the theatre. I’m so happy. I love all the other stuff, but in the theatre, I feel the most creative.
Q: So now you’ve come full circle.
A: I feel like I’m home. I wish my old teacher Lee was around to see it, but it does feel like I’m doing what I should have been doing from the beginning. I love doing theatre.
