Posts Tagged ‘theater’

I don’t think I have ever talked about what I do for my job and since I have a pretty unique one, I thought I’d share.  The company I work for builds scenery and automation for Broadway.  I won’t lie – I love what I do and its always fun to talk about because its not a common job.

I have been working in theater for almost 15 years.  I started in high school.  Truthfully I was dragged into it, but soon after I started I was hooked.  In high school I designed and built the sets, acted in all of the plays, took tap dancing lessons for four years (still have those tap shoes buried in my closet I think).  I did it all.  The last show I did in high school was Singing in the Rain. I played Don Lockwood (no I don’t have a video, and even if I did you can’t see it) and figured out how to make it rain on our stage.  It was pretty cool.

When high school had come and gone, I found myself going to UCF with a scholarship for technical theater.  From the get-go I knew I was done with the acting/dancing/singing thing, because I wasn’t good at it.  But I was really good at building sets.  In college I worked in the scene shop any chance I had.  I worked on all the shows and really excelled.  I was the first student that the faculty trusted enough to give me my own show to plan, build, and manage.  It was a big moment for me, and I give all the credit to the great professors and mentors I had at that school.

Guys and Dolls - UCF

In college I also worked at the award winning Utah Shakespearean Festival one year as a carpenter and then I went back as an assistant technical director.  A Technical Director’s job is to take the drawings that a designer creates, engineer how they are built, and then manage the carpenters building the scenery and getting it on stage, or “load-in”.

HMS Pinafore - Utah Shakes

As undergrad was coming to an end, I was just excepting the fact that I would get a job in a theater somewhere and that would be that.   However for one of the last shows while I was there, I ended up building this little tool to help bend steel one day in the shop for a show.  One of my professors said I should write an article about it and send it in to some technical theater publications.

“An Affordable Steel Roller Bender” Published by The Yale Technical Briefs October 2006.

That was my claim to fame at the time.  It was awesome!  Not only did I get something published by Yale (which was like The Emerald City at the time to me, it was a place you only heard about, but it wasn’t real) but after the process of publishing the article, the editor of the Yale publication asked me to apply to grad school at the Yale School of Drama.

Suddenly I went from doing theater in high school to getting the absolute best education possible in technical theater.  There are theater graduate schools everywhere and there are a lot of really great programs out there, but none of them offer what Yale can offer.  Most of the good grad schools were started by and are run by graduates of Yale.  There is no comparison to anything else.  I wouldn’t trade for anything for the three years I spent at Yale.  It was a remarkable experience.  I did everything from structural & mechanical engineering, to designing hydraulic and pneumatic systems for stage machinery.  It was a massive amount of work, but I learned so much and loved every minute of it looking back.

Attempts on Her Life - Yale

Eurydice - Yale

Eurydice - Yale

At Yale I started to shift my focus a little into becoming more of a production manager/project manager.  A project manager is different than a technical director because they deal more with the business side of a production – budgets, calendars, overall production needs, overseeing the technical aspects of an entire theatrical season instead of one show.  I was the Technical Supervisor for the New York Summer Play Festival for a year while I was at Yale and that kicked off my NYC work.  It was great because I was basically in charge of anything and everything technical for a festival of 16 different shows in 4 weeks.  That was a lot of work!  But I went to work on 42nd street everyday, which was pretty freaking cool.

15 years after starting, I feel like I’m pretty much at the top.  I work for one of the top scene shops for Broadway.  We build all of the big shows: Mary Poppins, Lion King, Billy Elliot, Phantom, etc.  Last year I managed the Times Square Ball being built.  The FREAKING TIMES SQUARE BALL!  Thats crazy!  I can’t believe how far I have come, from building scenery in a parking lot in high school to undergrad to Utah to Yale to Broadway.

So now what?  I have no idea.  I’m really starting to miss something and I haven’t quite put my finger on it yet.  I used to be really excited to go to work.  I used to put so much extra effort into everything that I did because I knew people were watching and they were going to tell me how I did after I was finished.  I loved that feedback – good or bad.  I am finding that at this senior level of theater management, there is very little collaboration and I miss that part of working in theater.  Maybe its a funk, maybe I need a new job, maybe its because I have the Bean now, maybe its something else entirely.  We will just have to wait and see what happens.  Until then, the next time you go to the theater to see a show or if your in Times Square staring up a that big flashy ball, think of me.

-Chris