Theatre
One of my main hobbies for quite some years has been technical theatre. This started way back when I was around 10 or 11: I somehow got it into my head that all the lighting and sound stuff could be a bit of fun. After making contact with my village’s amateur dramatic society (SBADS), I got fairly swiftly roped into opping (operating) the lighting board for a forthcoming revue. This, my debut as a lampie, involved sitting in the shadows at the front and side of the auditorium (the cables we had weren’t long enough to reach the rear) by a tiny table on which rested a Strand LX12.
Having so proven my worth, I continued to tech SBADS shows until I was around 15. In this time I’d done further hours on the LX12, as well as fiddling with a larger desk (still fully manual, as I recall) that was hired for a larger production. I’d also helped with numerous get-ins and -outs (the days immediately before a production, when the set was constructed/erected, the lights rigged, and the cues decided/practiced), and opped sound for a couple of shows, using a 12-channel Spirit Folio and a stack of CD, tape and minidisc players. This was before anyone I knew had a CD burner, so generally there’d be a pile of perhaps 5 or 10 CDs on the desk beside me, and I had to practice rapid swapping of discs to coincide with the louder bits of the play…
After that first revue, I got to know a guy at SBADS who was priviledged to help with technical arrangements at the secondary school we both attended. KEVICC had an active drama department even in 1998 (it’s now a ‘Performing Arts Specialist School’), and the pupils did extracurricular performances on a regular basis. Mike invited me to help out with a Christmas Revue at school, at the end of 1998 (I think): whilst I got to see how things were different there to at SBADS, my only role during the performance was mopping up some single cream after a messy sketch, to ensure the dancers that followed didn’t have any embarrasing slips.
The following academic year, from September 1999, a new drama assistant arrived who started a regular after-school club for the technically inclined. I was there like a shot, along with a handful of other students, all older than me, who’d not really had a chance until the reigning technical “crew” (with whom I worked for the Christmas Revue) had gone on to VI form that year. We spent large portions of the evenings doing mundane things like labelling and testing all the lantern stock, but as the Heads of Drama and Music got to know me, I rapidly started to get invited to “just put a few lights on” for concerts, rock gigs, GCSE and A Level performances, and other events in the theatre.
My friends fairly quickly got used to seeing me all in black at the back of the raked auditorium, hunched over the Zero 88 Sirius 48-channel lighting desk that lived there (it had no screen other than a tiny LCD, but sufficient LEDs to cast an ominous glow on my face). Likewise, teachers fairly soon became used to me finding them and asking if I could miss their lesson the following afternoon because “Mrs B [either one] asked me to do some lighting.” I always caught up missed lessons, or got the work in advance, so this was rarely a problem. I occasionally tacked work backstage or opping sound, but almost invariably was on lampie duty, and got to know the many obscure features and eccentricities of the Sirius off by heart. (Hold + and -, turn key from 9 to 6 o’clock and then back to 12 o’clock…)
I also got involved in a couple of more carefully planned shows, and started to understand the process and theory of lighting design. This is something that I’ve never developed to a great extent, due mainly to lack of practice, but I have always enjoyed the creative decisions of lantern choice and placement. Sadly our lantern stock, lack of regular maintenance thereof, and lack of budget, generally precluded anything too interesting.
As my academic work started to get busier through GCSEs and in to A Levels, I became less able to do technical theatre at school, and a new crop of youngsters gradually took over. I focussed on my work, which eventually took me to Cambridge University.
I wasn’t technically inactive during this period, though. One of my co-techies was already involved with lighting a production of Under Milk Wood in autumn 2003, when he realised he wouldn’t be available to op one of the nights. He persuaded me to shadow him for the first two nights, then left me to it for the remaining performances. This production wasn’t at school, however, but by the Dartington Playgoers, an AmDram group operating from a near-by village. More importantly, this was my first experience on a fully digital lighting board – a Strand 300 series. Working with a ‘go’ button and a monitor was almost completely alien to me (save one day in the tech box at the Drum Theatre in Plymouth, with a school show), as was the concept of a soft patch!
So I found my way into another theatrical scene. Like SBADS, the Playgoers had a fairly keen core of younger people in addition to more vintage stalwarts – but now I was at an age where I could socialise more freely. We were keen to keep in touch after the production finished, and I’m still occasionally in contact with them to this day. We worked together again in various combinations on two other Playgoers productions before I headed off to Uni, and Dartington’s Barn Theatre is still one of my favourite venues.
I went up to Peterhouse, Cambridge in October 2005, at which point, of geographical necessity, all activity with Devon theatre groups had to stop. I occasionally made it back to see productions and catch up with old acquaintances, but was never in the county long enough to take part in anything. This didn’t matter, because Cambridge had (and has) the most active drama scene I’ve yet experienced. With a drama society in almost every college, and a number more of University-wide drama societies, the variety of things to get involved in is enormous. I got stuck in with some lighting on a Strand 520 at the ADC Theatre, and soon found myself getting involved in sound design and the odd bit of carpentry and website design as well. I was also involved in productions in my college, with lighting run from a battered old Strand Tempus with 12 channels, but no plastic on a couple of the faders!
Whilst at Cambridge my theatrical experience broadened no end, with a three-week European tour of Macbeth by coach, technical work for a couple of May Balls, and time serving on the committees of two student theatre funding bodies, which involved me more in “production” aspects of theatre. Having got out the other side with a degree in my fist, I’ve proceeded to take up a job at the ADC, which is the main student theatre in the city. I now look after the theatre’s marketing strategies, as well as the front of house areas and the bar, which is a side-step from technical theatre, but still fascinating. My interest in theatre is still growing rather than dwindling, and who knows where it’ll take me next?