my high school needs more student techs!

[Florple]

I am the td at my highschool and lately my biggest problem with my techs is lack of interest. Over 90% of our techies have just graduated. So now i am left scrounging the lower classes for interested people and finding few. So my question is, how can i make people interested? I need ideas to pull people into our techie group. Right now we have myself and two nerds for a 700 seat theatre. I am thinking getting out some equipment people will want to play with like cameras at our weekly meetings. Any other high school techs can post what got you interested. And other tds can post what they do to attract volunteers.

[PeytonJr]

This is almost exactly what my situation is too. Currently I usually just have the actors pitch in when they're not rehearsing, and sometimes the directors/sm's.
Our theatre program is often overshadowed by the jazz band (Garfield Jazz Rocks!), so people dont think of volunteering at the theatre.
Perhaps you could have your school newspaper run an article or advertisement on the tech program.

[NickJones]

Get one, and chances are you will get more, as most people hang around with likeminded people, just keep asking, sooner or later, someone will turn up, advertise the "get out of class" aspect only if all else fails.
Nick

[Eboy87]

Offer pizza. Seriously.

[scotty269]

I was interested in joining my school's "stage crew" the first time I walked into our auditorium. It in a 1940's era theatre with a crappy sound and old lighting system. I like a good challenge. I recruited some of my friends (asians, the only ones who had enough free time help out) and now it's a group of 5 or so Asians, and 4 White kids (myself included).

But seriously, free food always does the trick. Getting out of class, too.

[NickJones]

We used to do training days, just pizza, and rock music. We used to set up the speakers, that was the tech part, and then crank the music, kick back and eat pizza...
Nick

[Avyner1]

so this is how I did it...put on a worthy lighting display...get some special stage blacks with names on them and offer a day of training..."anything to get out of school" like what nick said but accually do some stuff including eatting pizza =]

[Nathaniel]

I would say that the kids who just want pizza or want to get out of class aren't the people you want. My advice would be to talk to your school's orchestra, math team, and computer programming classes, and have your actors talk to their friends, to see if you can find anybody that's interested. (speaking as a high school student)

[Clifford]

Sounds like nobody knows about tech production at your school. Is tech a class at your school? Is it listed on the Course Request Form?

If it's not a class, talk to your director/teacher and see if it can become a class. It they can't make it its own period (hour), see if it can be combined with one of the drama classes. Our tech class is going to be combined with our 4th year drama class next year. For us, this was done because of budget and because the teacher wanted more control over who got into tech (most of the class sits and does nothing). I bet your administration could do something similar. This would at least get an official class started up. Then you make sure that it's on the CRF, so students can see it. Now anyone who might have been interested, but didn't know how to get into tech not only knows it exists, but can quite easily enroll.

[Dynydthewanderer]

I agree with one of the previous posts, that your class needs to be a class. At my school, GHS, the stage crew incorporates some of the best students, and every year about a week ago actually we look around for some of the "brighter" or rather more "dedicated" freshmen to fill our class. If you really want a good crew you have to get some motivation in so again I gotta go pizza... but not just pizza for showing up you gotta make them work! Have an application process just a simple form with a list of contacts or something make them say why they want to be in the class (or club if that doesn't quite work out). weed out the nimrods who join because of the pizza and take those people who want to work and have fun doing so.


So advertise the pizza but make sure youre people work for it