Different paths lead to promising technical theatre careers.
In the live event production industry, many succeses are earned in the school of street smarts. You’ve heard the awe-inspiring story just about a million times. Well, here it is again — a million and one. A budding technical star moves to the Big Apple or Hollywood with nothing more than raw talent, a wad of cash saved from a low-wage job in “Nowheresville” and a lifelong dream to design for a large-scale, high-profile production. He or she takes a chance, hoping to become the next best thing in the world of glitzy lights.
Other aspiring talents, however, choose a different direction to reach the big time. From Hollywood to Broadway, many successful designers and technicians are also graduates of production schools. While they still have to pay their dues in the real world like everyone else, graduates consider the extra education and experience showcased on their portfolio as a leg up over the competition.
College on a Whim
“I went to school mostly on a whim,” said Brian Sidney Bembridge, a freelance scenic and lighting designer who graduated with a bachelor’s degree from North Carolina School of the Arts’ (NCSA) design and production program in 1997. “I was involved in community theatre my whole life — hung lights, designed props, but nothing on a large scale. I loved theatre, but I didn’t think I was good enough to be on stage. So, I went to school to learn the technology behind it.” After graduation, Bembridge moved to Chicago and became a member of the Lookingglass Theatre Company, where he designs sets and lights for productions across the country, notably Death of a Salesman produced by Madison Repertory Theatre and The Brothers Karamazov, produced by Theatre Alliance. “I went to Chicago because I had no desire to move to New York City and assist Broadway designers,” he admits. “I wanted to learn through my own experiences.”
Bembridge considers the experience he gained from his involvement in the school’s theatrical productions and tech courses, where he learned AutoCAD, VectorWorks and Wysiwyg — the “nuts and bolts” of design — as the most valuable aspect of his education. “NCSA has a very demanding program that will kick your butt,” he says. “It has a high drop-out rate during freshman year because people can’t take it.” Unlike the carefree existence of a typical college student whose schedule consists of sleeping until noon, a couple afternoon classes and nights of frat parties, students in the design and production school live and breathe the conservatory-style curriculum. Many weekdays, Bembridge attended classes and production work from 8 a.m. until 11 p.m. “You have hands-on experience, you crew, build scenery, design costumes,” he says. “When you get into production, it takes up most of your weekend.”
The curriculum encouraged experimentation and creative expression, a valuable approach Bembridge says he now incorporates into his set and lighting projects. Initially, Bembridge’s design renderings focused on the technical aspects, and he remembers getting into arguments with professor Franco Colavecchia who emphasized design as an art form. “He would say ‘this is art, not architecture,’” Bembridge recalls. “Franco really made me look at rendering differently — less technically, more about the art behind it.”
Experimental Collaboration
Arizona State University’s Herberger College of the Arts School of Theatre and Film stresses two main points in its mission statement: collaboration at the onset of the creative process and the production of new, experimental theatre, says Jake Pinholster, assistant professor of media design who was assistant video designer for several popular productions in New York City, including Spamalot and Wicked. Instead of replicating the canons of Shakespeare, and ancient Greek, renaissance and 20th century American classics, Herberger College of the Arts encourages new forms — screenplays written in the last five years.
“It helps students buy into it more when they feel that it is a part of their culture and the world they are currently a part of,” Pinholster says. He acknowledged that the strength of the program also resides in the fact that students can specialize in a number of areas within design and production, including lighting, costumes, media and sound and stage management. “The curriculum is not rigidly structured, which gets directors and playwrights into the design classes and vice versa,” he says. “It allows students to spread themselves across a wide variety of design disciplines in order to become a well-rounded designer.”
Daniel Brodie, who graduated from the Herberger College in May 2006, took advantage of the diverse program with a specialization tailored to his interest in digital media and projection. While taking a digital media theory course his junior year, Brodie said his interest was peaked by a presentation Pinholster gave to the class about the integration of video, projection and live feeds, and how these latest trends in theatre are the future of the industry. The following year, Brodie signed up for Pinholster’s digital media lab class with two components: software and hardware configuration. He learned Adobe Photoshop, Flash, Aftereffects and Avid editing software as tools to create digital media content and was exposed to all aspects of projectors: how and where to hang them, what playback systems and software to use and how to integrate media into cues.
“We learned how to set the video up so a board operator can run it without the designer being present, how to connect it the lighting board and how to cue everything together,” Brodie says. Now, as a freelance video designer based in New York City, the playback systems he designed for his most recent work, the theatrical piece Behind the Lid by the performance artist Lee Nagrin and puppeteer Basil Twist, are nearly identical to the ones he designed at Arizona State. “I’ve always been passionate about technology — specifically cutting-edge technology — and I’ve been involved in theatre since I was ten or so,” he added. “I always wanted to figure out a way to blend these two passions, and it seemed like a very appropriate and fortunate turn of events for me.”
The Trade Tech Approach
When Susan Rose, a lighting programmer and designer for well-known concert tours such as Ringo Starr and Hank Williams Jr. with Lynyrd Skynyrd, attended Full Sail back in 1989, she had her sights set on the spotlight. But unlike most lighting techs, instead of creating the spotlight, she wanted to be in it. At the time, she was a country singer with a plan to move to Nashville and land a recording contract. But first, she needed a backup plan and decided to get trained on the technical side of the industry, specifically media and sound, because she eventually wanted to own a recording studio. “I moved to Nashville to pursue being a performer, but there was always work for techs,” she says. “It turned out to be my day job because performers are a dime a dozen, but techs always have a gig.” Rose credits her education at Full Sail for any success because, prior to the program, she had minimal technical experience. “They really introduced me to the computer world we were getting into, and I realized I had a knack for the technical side,” she says.
After graduation, Rose worked as a sound technician at Opryland theme park. She became familiar with lighting consoles after “playing with the original Wholehog lighting console on many afternoons.” In due time, Rose was the only person trained to use the console, and as a result, became a lighting programmer for the Opryland concert series. One thing led to another, and her connections through the concert series led her to other gigs, from fixing lighting in nightclubs to hitting the road as lighting designer and programmer for numerous country singers, notably Louise Mandrell in 1995.
Full Sail also helped her obtain an internship at Walt Disney World’s Epcot Center after graduation, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity where she learned all aspects of production: programming lights and sound and costume and set design. She recommends students take advantage of an internship for professional contacts and real-world experience. Today, she is in the midst of a project at Walt Disney World’s MGM Studios, which she describes as “the most challenging project thus far in my career.”
She is the lighting programmer for The Osborne Family Spectacle of Lights, an annual Christmas event where 27 buildings are illuminated with over five million synchronized Christmas lights and LEDs. “I’m using a Hog iPC, a newer version that actually drives it, and Sync/Timecode triggers the lights to blink on and off and fade,” she says. To show her appreciation, Rose still keeps in contact with past professors and supports her alma mater by lecturing each year to students in the lighting program.
The Unofficial Internship
Boston University’s School of Theatre is affiliated with the city’s highly regarded regional Huntington Theatre Company, which shares the same theatre space and produces seven shows each season. As a result, theatre majors have the opportunity to assist Huntington Theatre designers and attend professional roundtable discussions or informal meetings to discuss their production work and ask questions, says lighting design professor Mark Stanley. “It’s not an official internship, but students are exposed to that professional connection on campus.” Eric Larson, who graduated from the school in May 2005 with a bachelor of fine arts in lighting design, says he worked during his college career as master electrician and assistant lighting designer, as well as projection programmer and designer. “You can make real-world connections beyond the professors who are teaching there,” he says. “I assisted lighting designers Chris Parry and Matthew Richards, who still hire me on a regular basis and have gotten me work through other people.”
Although education provides a solid foundation, Anthony Kudner, who received a graduate degree in lighting design from Boston University in 2007, says “business applications and real-world know-how” is rarely taught. Many schools “glamorize” a career in entertainment, resulting in graduates who are in for a rude awakening when they take their first steps into the real world. “When I am in technical rehearsals, 100-hour weeks are the norm — it’s pretty exhausting,” he says. He would attend optional weekly colloquiums where guest lecturers such as concert tour lighting designers reflect about life on the road, or lawyers discuss contracts, unions and more “nitty-gritty” factors of the industry. These lectures offer real-world scenarios, which Kudner recommends more professors should teach in the classroom. “We were given a wonderful lecture by a general manager of the New York City Ballet about intellectual property rights, setting up your own company and what it means to incorporate,” he recalls. “And distinguished lighting designer Steven (Louis) Shelley discussed the business of design.”
A Wish List
Josh Selander, who received his lighting technology degree from the North Carolina School of the Arts in 2006, says he wished he had the opportunity to learn about projections and media servers throughout his education — new technology the school recently implemented this past year for the production of West Side Story, a mammoth production that integrated video into the mix. He notes the most important aspect of a production school education is the cutting-edge equipment, a constant struggle for many state universities because of funding concerns. Similarly, Brodie acknowledged that labs need to be outfitted with the latest, fastest equipment. “I certainly had enough to work with, but there still wasn’t enough of the latest equipment, which is usually prohibitively expensive.”
