In my high school, the
theatre was an open part of the school. During school hours, students were passing through it constantly--there were at least three class rooms that were behind the
theatre, and the only way to get to them was walk through the audience. All in all, the
theatre was completely insecure.
When it was actually being used as a
theatre though, we had two people who would come in and run the tech side of it. They were responsible for "hiring" the student techs. By hiring I mean deciding if they would allow you to volunteer. The first day we were on
stage was all about safety--what you were and weren't allowed to touch. If you hadn't been trained and given the ok from them, you weren't allowed to touch the flyrail except under their direct supervision. If they caught you doing something you weren't supposed to, you were off tech.
Sounds like, and very well may be, what I knew as my middle school. That sounds exactly like the old
auditorium across the street from the existing high school. Fortunately with the new arts Center we just built, we have a designated arts center manager, and unless a school group (with teacher) or experienced student tech is doing work in there, the
house and
stage are usually locked off. They even went to the extent of alarming the doors to the center so anyone entering from the school during times they shouldn't be in there, sets off a really loud alarm that's impossible to tell whether or not it's armed unless you've set it off.
In the old
auditorium when students would walk through the audience, it was always fun to show up to that night's rehearsal and see what the students had screwed up or vandalized. I remember piecing back together my sound
system once or twice and cleaning up paint some kid threw all over the set and
border lights for giggles. The worst thing was the study halls they would hold in there.
Now the middle school has been shut down and divided into two new intermediates which both have cafetoriums. One of the strangest rooms ever conceived, but they work well for age groups that have no grasp for respecting their performance venues. Both intermediates were upset that they wouldn't, by default, be allowed to perform all of their shows at the new
theatre. Granted, these are groups that are used to two months on
stage for rehearsals, [have asked that] the rehearsal
hall or scene shop become their dedicated costuming area for two months, and so on and so forth. The harsh reality is that in a roadhouse, it's load a show in, maybe one rehearsal, two if you're especially lucky, and then performance(s) and "get the heck out of here." Roadhouse budgets, seasons, and overall success simply doesn't coexist well with groups like that.
Ironically, I ended up cleaning up the mess of our two people that came in and did everything. They always emphasized
safety, but I truly am surprised they were never the cause of someone getting killed. This past summer when I cleaned out old equipment left in their wake, I had huge piles of orange and brown extension cords that I had to
throw away. Many of the cords that were intended to have
ground pins, had the
ground pins removed, or exposed conductors. I remember finding this brown extension
cord that had been sliced and diced with
zip cord to create essentially a 60' brown extension
cord of ungrounded doom, which is perfect for taking that household lamp into the middle of a football field and turning it on, but belongs no where near a
stage. I also remember finding flash powder that had been sitting in a coffee can for nearly 10 years, painting chemicals that were leaking on the floor of the storage room, fixtures with lovely
asbestos insulated [or] exposed conductors. If confronted, they'd turn around in a heartbeat and say "It's not included in our contract to deal with those problems" even though they had been sitting on that junk for ~28 years.
They taught me one significant thing; the only thing worse than no technical management is poor technical management. I made a stand against them on a production when they were yelling at the entire crew, accusing them that the emotional distress of one female crew member was all their fault, and they were the reason this person had quit the show. I then refuted that(as the
stage manager), stating that some people just shouldn't be involved in
theatre as their existing emotional conditions are only going to become worse as a direct result of their involvement, and that the crew in no form had been the cause of this girl's emotional breakdown(which we'd later find out was because of her finding out she was pregnant with her graduated, military ex-boyfriend's child). Yea, that was when they told me I was terrible person, suggested I shouldn't be on the show, and then threatened to revoke my access to their tech
theatre scholarship program, which I appropriately refer to as blood money due to the number of times I've seen them hold it against people. I took a few days off from the show and came back, but they were all into politics. They couldn't go through a show without making their objections to the director's plans publicly known to the crew.
A few weeks back I remember seeing a thread about what traits are good to technical directors, and I thought to myself that these two were the exact opposite of anyone that should ever fill those positions. Especially that part about not pitting techs against other techs. In their later days in
theatre, they were simply embittered people that sucked students into their embittered black hole of inexperience and harsh attitude problems, surrounded by a cloud of maladaptive and inappropriately political tendencies. I now emphasize to all of my students that the entire premise of live
theatre is constantly changing details that you need to be prepared for and willing to take head on without complaint. That last (and hopefully final) show that those two "technical directors" worked on, during
strike, said that it was OK for a crew member to
call a cast member an ________ for helping out incorrectly, and that the cast member probably had it coming to them. Those are not people that I ever want as
role models in my school.
The only aspect of
theatre they approached safely was rigging. They took rigging very seriously, but it's still OK to run 3/4 of the lighting
system with orange extension cords and for one particular show use miles of orange extension cords to run
stage lighting and 40 circuits of Xmas lights. We put a couple people in the hospital from time to time, be it a staple in the thumb that permanently damaged nerves, or the kid throwing lenses in the dumpster who sliced her
hand so wide open we had to get a mop to clean the blood up with, or that time one of them went up on a 14' ladder to focus lights, which it was stacked on two sets of 48" risers and he stood on the absolute top "non-step," but I'll be darned, you were safe when the arbors were being reweighed. Oh man, I miss the days when they would store the asbestos-wired lights in all of their frayed goodness inside of a cold air
return duct for the high school. Mustn't forget that blue polystyrene they fought with our
fire marshal to use on
stage. I know that stuff is relatively OK when you have five layers of paint on it and it comprises about one piece of 'furniture' or prop, but they used it like it was
muslin or plywood. They made chairs out of it, walls, fireplaces; entire sets were built in blue polystyrene. You know, that same stuff that killed some 17 people in '97 in Dusseldorf Airport and harmed many more due to
smoke inhalation and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. Yea, these people
argued with the
fire marshal about that. IF there's anything any intelligent person in tech
theatre knows, it's that you
never argue with the
fire marshal.
Also ironic, is that they're also the same people that made a stand against winches(winches were the original proposal for our new center), which is why we have a
counterweight system.
Be careful what you wish for, just because there's a TD on the premise doesn't really mean they're qualified. In many schools there's a person with that as their job title, who just so happens to be someone who originally applied for their English teaching position and when posed the question responded with, "Yes, I can manage the
theatre," even though they're making it up as they go along in hopes they get hired. I now never even make assumptions that my employers know what they're doing, or are using safe practices while they work. I have one TD who wraps his lighting
power cables around the pipes of the
electric, another who uses a single-man lift with the outriggers removed, coworkers who laugh at the prospect of using a harness while in the lift, and another employer who uses a staple gun to secure [wiring] for practicals to set pieces. Nobody's perfect, but some are signicantly more dangerous to the general public more than others. The overall
point being that just because someone fills a job title, doesn't mean that fill the job description, as stagehands, it's our responsibility to not take the practices of others as assumed to being unquestionably safe, regardness of who it is or how experienced they are.
