As a child, Chad Croteau's mother took him to see the musical The Phantom
of the Opera. Along with the singing and dancing, he saw a boat row across
stage and a chandelier come crashing down. He couldn't believe his eyes. "I
was blown away by the special effects onstage," he says. "Pyrotechnics, fog,
haze, and lighting."
Like Croteau, everyone has been swept up in a live performance at some
point. It could be a play, a musical, or maybe a concert. Audiences are transported
to magical places because of the hard work and skills of theater technicians.
Perhaps the best compliment a theater technician can get is when someone doesn't
notice their work. That means it looked, felt and sounded real. Only mistakes
tend to draw people's attention to their behind-the-scenes magic.
When Croteau was in high school, he joined a technical production club,
and his interest in lighting and special effects grew. Today he runs his own
professional lighting design company. He loves his job.
"I like that lighting is intangible," he says. "You can't pick it up and
hold it. However, you can see it and feel it. The emotional aspects of lighting
fascinate me. I like the combination of art and science that are needed to
be a good lighting designer."
Anthony Churchill also started in technical theater when he was in high
school, but he didn't get serious about it until college. "I joined the technical
crew and it was my first 'real' paying job," he says. The college's technical
director at the time took Churchill under his wing and inspired his love of
the theater arts. Today, Churchill is the technical director at the same school,
Oakton Community College.
Working at a college, Churchill is involved both with theater and the students.
He's not sure which part of his job he enjoys most. "When I started, I was
very excited to be designing sets and working on theater day in and day out,"
he says. "But the educational aspect of my job is something that really changed
the way I see the world. Young minds, limitless energy and youthful ambition
never cease to surprise, inspire and delight me."
If there's one thing most professional theater technicians have in common,
it is that the theater bug bit them early on.
Samantha Hindle is head of sound at a theater. She had always liked theater,
but she first got involved in the technical side of theater in high school.
"I started out doing sound for our lunch hour Theater Sports group," she
says. "I continued on stage, managing and doing sound for our main stage productions."
Creative and technical challenges keep theater technicians on their toes.
"Challenges seem to fall into two categories," Hindle says. "Personality
challenges or technical challenges."
Personality challenges stem from a large group of people working on many
different tasks on a very tight deadline. "Time pressures affect everyone
differently, and sometimes it feels we're all racing toward opening night."
"The personalities are a tough nut to crack," Churchill says. "Every day
I have to meet, trust and work with new people with a huge variety of skills,
personalities and motivations."
As a technical director, sometimes Churchill's job isn't much fun. "I hate
firing people," he says. "Nine times out of 10, it's because they can't work
within the team paradigm. If the skills are lacking, we can work with a student
and train them. But if they won't participate in the collaborative process,
it generally is difficult to keep them on board. Theater is first and foremost
a collaborative craft, and this is crucial to working on the crew."
Technical challenges are the bread and butter of theater technicians. Lighting
director Julie Ballard says the biggest challenge of her job is "going into
bare spaces and having to turn them into a theater. I once turned an old truck
warehouse into a performance space," she says.
"I enjoy special effects a great deal," Croteau says. Each one is its own
technical puzzle. "How do you make a witch float off the ground and then disappear?
How do you make blood start running down a wall? These kinds of questions
come up regularly in my line of work. And I don't think there's any other
industry where such creative problems come up. It's a great mental exercise
to try and figure these kinds of effects out."
There are less enjoyable challenges to being a theater technician. Creating
fantasy worlds isn't easy on a tight budget. Hours are long, too.
"I work 60 to 100 hours each week," Churchill says. "This can be pretty
wearing, even for a job I absolutely love."
Theater is always exciting. Anything can happen during a live show. So
theater technicians need to be prepared. Performers can get sick or hurt.
Power can go out. Microphones might stop working. Props can be misplaced.
Rigging may get stuck. Knowing anything can happen adds to the thrill, but
more often than not, the shows go well.
"Opening night is always a great experience," Croteau says. "When everything
comes together as it should on a show, you get to sit back and watch the audience
react to what you've put together. It's truly thrilling. Even though I don't
appear on stage, when an audience starts clapping because the witch did in
fact float in the air, and then disappear, it is as much the
designers' credit as it is the actors. I can't help but smile when that happens."