Happy to see so many people joining in. I used to use this blog more when I was getting my theatre degree. But I will be happy to use it to answer any asks or questions about Theatre or tech. Iâm not a pro or anything but Iâm pretty good I think.
To provide a little bit of a resume:
I have worked on like 16ish productions as a sound designer and engineer.
I have some experience as a lighting designer.
I have participated in, and planned, set building. I have never designed sets but I can draft, which is to say that I can draw them in such manner as to be built.
I have used vectorworks for lighting and set building.
I have studied theatre history.
Iâve written and published one 10 minute play that youâve never heard of, and Iâm working on some longer works.
But yeah, semi-pro theatre tech who got out of the game because of how awful I found some professionals to be. I am happy to help anyone else on their theatre journey because my experience is not everyoneâs and I still love live theatre like the desert does the rain.
HATE the fact that the âless importantâ Tonyâs (the tech awards) are thrown into a pre-show instead of being as important as best actor or show.
Without tech, thereâd be no theater. THEY are the most important awards.
They are not the ones getting recognized at curtain or stage door. The Tonys are the only time theyâre acknowledged by the common audience so put them in the main show with the energy, devotion, and love they deserve.
(Edit: as an actor myself, techies are literally my favorite people on the face of the earth)
The Clear-Com base unit has just been sitting on the booth counter since it got repaired. So likeâŠat least a year lmao
Today I finally snapped and put it back in the rack where it belongs and doesnât take up any space đ
Apparently my director went to see a production of West Side Story a few years ago, and the guy playing Chino forgot his gun before coming out for his final scene. Once it got to the big scene where he is supposed to shoot Tony, he screeched âPoison Bootsâ and kicked the actor playing Tony until he went down. The girl playing Maria then had to jerk the shoe off of Chinoâs foot, and had to do the gunshot scene asking âHow many kicks Chino? How many kicks, and one kick left for meâ.Â
There should be a blog dedicated to theatrical urban legends. Like that opening weekend of Dracula where Dracula (still hungover) vomited all over the audience during the first stage direction that everyone has a friend of a friend that worked on the show and was there.
or the one where the bridge never came out for Javertâs suicide and so he just pretended to stab himself and then lay there until the lights went out
best story i heard was when a friend of mine saw a show where juliet forgot to bring the dagger out on stage so she just ripped the squib out of her chest and blood squirted everywhere
During a passion play a friend of my brother was supposedly in, one of the roman soldiers who was supposed to stab jesus on the cross and accidentally grabbed the wrong spear- he was supposed to grab one with a fake tip, but instead he grabbed one with an actual metal tip and, well
Jesus screamed âJESUS CHRIST YOU STABBED MEâ.
Since that Jesus had to be taken down due to a bad case of stab-itis, the backup Jesus came in, but he weighed significantly less than the original Jesus- which would have been fine, except that at the end the cross was supposed to ascend upwards with Jesus on it, and the weights hadnât been adjusted.
So Jesus, instead, ROCKETED UP into heaven (or, just, above the stage).
I was in Peter Pan once and one night at a performance, the adhesive holding our Hookâs mustache on was wearing off. It was near the end with a big fight scene and when he got attacked, he let his mustache fall and went âYOU RIPPED MY MUSTACHE OFF!â in a scandalized tone and it added a new note of hilarity to the whole scene (which was supposed to be funny anyway)
My junior year we were doing Romeo and Juliet and after Juliet poisons herself it was supposed to go dark and sheâd get off the stage. well the light crew accidentally turned them back on and Juliet who was sitting up slammed back down on the wooden bed with a loud bang. To which my theater teacher says into the com âzombie Julietâ and everyone who heard that had to keep as quiet as possible while our eyes were filling with tears.
i attended my countyâs performing arts high school majoring in vocal studies, (mostly geared towards musical theater and opera styles) and once a year we got a field trip to new york (we were in jersey, so itâs not exactly far). we would do one touristy thing, an actorâs workshop with friends of our teachers working in various performing industries in nyc, and then see a show.Â
my first year doing this, our industry contacts were 1 actor, 1 casting director, and 1 producer to get different aspects of the business, and they all gave us amazing advice and told fantastic stories. the actor in question was Zazu on Broadwayâs The Lion King for several years, and told the best story by far.
in The Lion King, there are only two pieces of pre-recorded noise in the whole show. one, when Pumbaa does a MASSIVE fart while fighting the hyenas, and the other being Mufasa saying REMEMBERRRRRR as Simba climbs Pride Rock. the actor told us while struggling not to laugh that, during one nightâs performance, someone forgot to flip the tape of these pre-recorded noises.
so, at the end of the show, the great climax where Simba finally accepts his place in the Circle of Life, the heavens parted and-
During a high school production of Beauty and the Beast, where I was assistant costumer and assistant prop master, our director decided that we needed to spice up Gastonâs introduction. You know: in the movie, when Lefou runs in trying to catch the duck/goose that Gaston has just shot out of the sky?
Originally, the actors were going to stroll on stage with our Lefou hauling in the really neat (and real!) taxidermied deer head that we had found in a local thrift store. Now, two days before opening night, our director wants Lefou to run in from off stage and catch a stuffed duck that Gaston has just shot. This, of course, requires two things to work properly as a scene: a gunshot noise, and a stuffed duck.
The gunshot noise, we had covered. Blue-collar, redneck school? Guns a plenty to record. The stuffed duck? Harder than you might have thought to obtain.
Three hunting stores, two taxidermists, and one Pet Supply Store âą, Iâd finally found a semi-realistic pheasant squeaky toy. What follows is an account of the ways this dog toy managed to be the nightmare prop of the six show run.
Opening Night: The stagehand, who was supposed to drop the bird from the ceiling catwalk, missed his cue and didnât drop the it. Lefouâs actor rolls with it and does an excellent job of looking around foolishly before getting cuffed upside the head by Gaston. The stagehand then drops the bird squarely on Gastonâs head. Cue laughter.
Saturday Matinee: Different stagehand throws the bird instead of dropping it and beans Lefou directly in the face with the prop. Lefou falls over. Cue laughter.
Saturday Night: Bird is missing during curtain call. Director hauls the deer head down from itâs place on the tavern wall and tells Gaston and Lefou to revert to the old blocking i.e. no gunshot, no bird, just walk in with trophy. During Gaston and Lefouâs conversation, gun shot sound goes off and a stagehand throws the bird onto the stageâŠfrom the wrong side of the stage. Lefou and Gaston stare at it in awkward silence for a solid thirty seconds before Lefou makes off-script, subtle joke about Gastonâs gun going off late instead of early. Cue adults in the audience laughing.
Sunday Matinee: Director begs the stagehands to get the cue right at least once. Gunshot and bird prop go off without a hitch. Lefou accidentally catches the prop when it falls from the catwalk. Heâs so startled that he caught it that Gaston runs right in to him. They drop both the gun and the bird props, and grab the wrong prop in their scramble. Gaston spends the rest of the scene gesturing dramatically with a stuffed pheasant, instead of a gun.
Sunday Night:Â Director is fed up with bird prop, decides that Lefou should just carry bird prop in after gunshot happens off stage. Lefou accidentally squeezes the prop during the intro conversation, startling both actors into silence with the squeaky toy noise - apparently, neither of them realized it was a dog toy.
Monday Elementary School Show: Lefou walks on stage with the bird. Accidentally drops the prop during conversation with Gaston. Gaston doesnât notice the dropped prop and steps on it. Cue depressingly sad squeaky toy noise. Cue ten years olds laughing.
I was in Twelfth Night during high school and we were lucky enough to have identical twin girls playing Viola and Sebastian. Due to the blocking in the first half of the play, their characters didnât appear on stage together but rather almost consecutively one after the other for a majority of the first act.
It was awesome because when people saw the play and didnât know the girls were identical twins, it literally looked like it was one actor doing multiple, uber fast costume changes.
One of our first performances was for our peers and it was a big school so lots of people didnât know the twins. This - for some reason - was also the performance they chose to record.
Listening to the confusion of the audience during the playback was fantastic and completely topped by the moment Viola walked off stage left just as Sebastian walked on stage right and someone right beside the camera goes âOH WHAT THE FUCKâ so loudly it drowned out everything else.
The best thing? That was the copy of the play that was made available for purchase by family and parents. Haha.
Oh my god. I went to one of the Spiderman shows where he flew out above the audience and then got stuck and had to awkwardly hang there for about 10 minutes, but these stories are brilliant.
okay so, my senior year of high school and Iâm part of the stage crew for Peter Pan. Thereâs a scene where Hook and Smee are searching for Peter and the Lost Boys. Now the theater department at my high school isnât very well funded (in the southern USA, football is king), so the sets we managed to make were pretty kickass for the money we had. We had a structure painted like a big tree stump for the entrance to the Lost Boysâ hideout. You could climb to the top of it, but also go inside it through a trap door that we kept locked up during most of the play.
Itâs like our third show and everything has been going surprisingly well. Hook and Smee climb to the top of the âtree trunkâ, supposedly looking for Peter and not knowing theyâre standing above his hiding spot the whole time.
Turns out someone didnât close the trapdoor properly, because the second Hook steps on it, he plunges through the thing. Heâs able to catch himself, but heâs got his ass and one leg dangling through this hole where itâs like a ten foot drop to the ground. All of us stage crew are literally two feet away from him offstage, just gaping at him because???? Y'all this fall looked BAD. Looked like my dude did the splits in mid air. The whiplash caused his fucking wig to come off. The audience is dead silent, all of us backstage are dead silent, the director is like already looking up how to treat a broken groin.
The kid who was playing Hook was like a fuckin sophomore and he KILLED it. He gave himself a second to catch his breath, never broke character, just looked up at his castmate and growled âSmee, you fool, help me up!â. He ended up playing off the wig thing as an embarrassing comedic bit for Hook, and the play went on. He was completely fine. It was the best thing Iâd ever seen.
There was an infamous performance of the opera Don Giovanni where in the last act Giovanni was suppose to be dragged into hell via trapdoor but the overweight actor got stuck, leading someone from the audience to shout: âHey everyone, Hellâs full!!âÂ
I was a costumer on a stage version of Titanic, and in the scene where the women and children are getting in the lifeboats, one of the men (who was supposed to be saying goodbye to his wife he knows he will never see again because his is about to die), realized his fake mustache was falling off and instead of playing it cool⊠he rips it off his face, and hands it to his wife with the line âSomething to remember me byââŠit was the funniest thing that I have ever seen in my 8 years in theatre, the entire cast lost their shit laughing at the most dramatic moment possible
I was in a production of Little Shop of Horrors wherein I had been double cast as Ronette and the voice of Audrey II. This was fine. Quick changes and runningâI lost 20 lbs. from sweating aloneâand singing and fine. Until the end.
During âFinale Ultimo,â I was supposed to be slung out of the open mouth of the plant, revealing the double casting to the audience. And it was fine, except for when they flung too hard. I flew right into the orchestra pit and landed on the violist.
As someone who primarily does lighting, the most important thing for me is my wrench (6 inches. Anything more than that is overkill đ and will get in your way).
My wrench hangs from a locking carabiner, which I clip to my belt loop. (I had a non-locking one for a while, and the first time it opened and my wrench fell I went to a fortunately nearby store and got a mountain climbing one đ )
Also on the carabiner is a piece of tie line that loops around my wrist as a safety, and a widget (which I donât honestly use all that often, but itâs really handy when you do need it! I also canât find a link to one right now, but if youâre not sure what I mean, just let me know!)
I also clip a roll of electrical tape (very useful!) to the carabiner when Iâm not using it.
Everyoneâs wrench setup is a little different, but this works for me. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted, so feel free to play around a little until you find a good configuration!
Beyond that, general safety things like gloves and steel toed boots.
One of the best pieces of advice Iâve ever been given is to bring a change of socks. If I know Iâm working eight hours or more, I try to throw an extra pair in my bag (if I remember) and I change them halfway through the day. It makes such a huge difference!
Itâs always good to have a water bottle if you donât have access to another source of water.
Another thing I donât use often but is incredibly useful when I need it is a multi tool. Again, there are so many out there (I got mine as a gift, so I didnât shop around) that you can find one with the features you want/find most useful. I mostly need a blade, pliers, and screwdrivers.
Beyond that, I always have a bottle with ibuprofen, gravol, antacids, and diarrhea pills (but thatâs more just general preparedness than for calls specifically)
I also have a mini first aid kit (right now it just has bandaids, but even having those close at hand is very helpful).
I donât need them often in my specific line of work, but I always have earplugs on me, and I recommend that everyone does! Our work can get very noisy and hearing damage is unfortunately pretty common.
I personally like my belt pouch, which is similar to this one and is exactly the right size for gobos to go home with you. (I also use it to collect tie line and little bits of tape)
I always have a phone charger (cable, block, and a power bank, just in case). I also have a Lightning to headphone jack adapter so I can use my phone to check audio playback (thanks, Apple đ)
Another thing I âbringâ is @neil-gaimanâs advice:
âYou get work however you get work, but people keep working in a freelance world (and more and more of todays world is freelance), because their work is good, because they are easy to get along with and because they deliver the work on time. And you donât even need all three! Two out of three is fine. People will tolerate how unpleasant you are if your work is good and you deliver it on time. People will forgive the lateness of your work if it is good and they like you. And you donât have to be as good as everyone else if youâre on time and itâs always a pleasure to hear from you.â
In my experience, this is true. On pretty much any given day I can at least manage two of those!
Ok. I think thatâs everything!
Of course a riggerâs kit (for example) is going to look very different than mine, but for a general call these are all good, common things to have.
Thanks again for asking, I hope this answer helps! Feel free to ask if youâd like to know anything else đ
SooooâŠI know weâre all in a really bad place right now and a lot of people need moneyâŠ
But I was already managing by the skin of my teethâŠand then yesterday I found out that the show that was going to get me through the month was cancelled. đ
So, I am turning to you, Techblr. Youâve really come through for me before, and I canât tell you how much I appreciate it!
If anyone has a few extra dollars to spare and my antics have amused you in the past, I could really use the help. I have very little food right now (I actually ran out of flour the other day, so I canât even likeâŠmake stuff), Iâm behind on bills, and Iâll need to get medication soon.
That being said, please donât feel any pressure to donate! If youâre not in a position to do so (and I know most of us arenât), please feel free to ignore this post (or just reblog it if youâre comfortable doing so)
Oh boy the hits just keep coming! Not only did I have a show cancel this month, my spouseâs work has come to a standstill because of the Canada Post strike (I still fully support the CUPWâs right to strike and Iâm behind them the whole way!) and I found out that an event Iâve been doing for the last 10 years, which has always given me a nice little pre-Christmas boostâŠhas been given to someone else.
So.
If anyone is able to send a few dollars my way, I would really appreciate it
I donât really have a goal number, just help paying bills and eating
Being sexually obsessed with a vtuber is like being horny for Spaventa. Not the guy playing Spaventa. Like, the comedia del arte character itself. The mask has wholly eclipsed the actor.
REMINDER FOR LIGHT DESIGNERS TO MAKE SURE THERE ARE FLASHING LIGHTS WARNINGS.
If you include flashing lights in your designs, please remember to inform someone who can ensure that there is a notification to the audience before the show starts! Your director might be distracted thinking about other stuff and not think to include that warning, so take the task upon yourself.
To anyone who needs to hear this with the holidays approaching (or just in general):
You are loved.
You are important.
You are wanted.Â
You are not alone.
The holidays can be hard for some, so this is me sending good vibes to all my amazing followers. Donât let anyone kill your vibe. Be kind to other people. Live your best life being your true authentic, amazing self. :)
Thanks for running this; I've learned a lot! I have 0 experience but I think I want to try 'back stage stuff' for fun when I start grad school (engineering). Any recommendations where to start? Should I look at the Uni's theater first or community? I know 21's not too old but it feels like everyone's been doing this forever. How would you recommend I get my feet wet? Thanks for your time!
2: Oh I suppose I should clarify: by âback stage stuffâ I meant like literally anything tech/crew related. (I hope that wasnât offensive) Obviously Iâd start at the very bottom but Iâm not even sure what the lowest position would be because all the positions have fancy sounding names that make me think they need loads of experience. Thanks again!!
Hi Anon,
First, there is no âlowest positionâ
Everyone has very valuable jobs in theatre. It doesnât run without them. Everyone is valued.
It depends on the University. Some Uniâs want only theatre kids, some will accept others with open arms (mine did because we were pretty small). My suggestion is you swing by the department office or send and email to the department.
If they donât allow non-theatre majors I would most definitely pursue community theatre. A simple email or phone call can get you a long way.
As for âback stage stuffâ usually itâs referred to âtechâ or ârun crewâ or âdressersâ
âTechâ
Usually runs along the lines of being a light / sound / projection board operator and sometimes fly operators.
âRun crewâÂ
Usually works to doing scene changes, handing actors props, pre setting things, lighting back stage for actors etc.
âDressersâ
These people usually help with quick changes (costume changes that have to happen in a minute or less).
I would recommend run crew or board operator!
Itâs a great place to get your feet wet and learn more about backstage without anything that is super stressful. Itâs also not a HUGE time suck (which is important as a grad student).
What NOT to take on: (Trust me as a grad student you will not have time.)
DONâT designâŠanything.Â
This includes props. Assistant design? Go for it after youâve gotten your feet wet!
Donât direct, especially if youâre new.
And for all that is holy: do not stage manage!! Good gosh I have met so many âstage managersâ that have maybe done run crew for one show and stress everyone out including themselves. Itâs not a good time for anyone. And especially trust me you will NOT have time as a grad student for SM stuff.
General theatre things for the newbie:
Black is your color now. Accept it. (Youâll want a pair of comfortable and supportive all black shoes)
Donât call tech / crew members âtechiesâ itâs kind of a slur term that some find offensive.
Also a lot of theatre people are very superstitious and if you donât believe in ghosts, you will once you start working in old theatres.
So donât :
Whistle in a theatre
Say the word âmacbethâ itâs usually referred to as âthe Scottish playâ
I donât really follow these, except the whistling one. It just irks me for some reason.
Shouting Safety:
Fly System:
If you hear âLine 6 coming in / out!âÂ
You say âThank you 6!â (or whatever number they said) then walk to the side of the stage until the line is in.
This also goes for loud noises being tested or lights going off:
