I got into it because I was recruited into the theater program at UT after I took an
introduction to technical theater class (I was an EE at that
point).
Now after six years of college, numerous regional and national tours, and hundreds of designs and installs I love it every time I sit behind the
desk as much as I did the first. The rush is something akin to sky diving.
Mike
That sounds like a chapter right out of my own story, for the most part.
I got into all this technical stuff because, when I was growing up, my dad was a sound guy at church (he's a EE, and that gene runs in the family). I started doing stuff there with the youth ministry when I was a "yute", and once high school rolled around I took Technical
Theatre because I thought that what I'd been doing at church might be useful there, and I might learn something and have fun too. My first year, I did sound since that was the extent of my background thus far. By the end of that year I'd learned to do everything possible on our lightboard, a
Producer/2 (this is in 1997). Standard tale of seniors graduating and the passing of the
torch and all: at the end of that year I asked our director who'd run lights after the guy who'd been doing it graduated, and he told me that I would. At 16 and virtually brand new to lighting, how cool and scary was that!
Those last two years of high school I lit probably half of the shows we did, and was involved doing sound or helping with lighting or something of the sort. Nothing much more elaborate than basic visibility lighting, though at some
point I figured out that there's art in it too.
I always knew that, engineering being in the family and having a knack for electronics, I'd major in EE at the local university (known for having a good engineering college). I started off there and too Stagecraft my first semester -- both as 3 hours of elective and as a final good-bye to my friend the
theatre. I also had continued to do technical stuff with the church, becoming an intern with the student ministry (the tech intern) after high school.
A year later, busy with everything at the church and such, I took a semester off from college, and a church friend of mine who had decided to major in
theatre gave me a
call one afternoon: he had been assigned to design and install and run sound for that first show of the season and needed some help. I came out one afternoon to help out (and a couple of other times that semester as well), and despite my best efforts the
theatre bug bit me. I switched majors that fourth semester, and I learned a ton in the following four-and-a-half years and had a blast doing it.
In college I ended up going back to the old
stomping grounds, the high school, to design lights for shows. I did that for two years and had a good time, and learned a ton there. It's a really great environment to experiment with design, because no matter how bad the design turns out, it's never any worse than a stereotypical "high school
play".
I get my six-year bachelor's degree and then I realize that the guys who have been lighting local
theatre here for the past 30 years are still doing it .. oops. I take a job as a website and database guy at a place I'd worked earlier in college, and three years later I'm still here and loving it. Great job, great people, decent pay, and decent flexibility. Now I light shows here and there on the side, for the fun of it, because the
theatre bug still has me.
Long story, about fifteen years in the making, but there you go: that's me.