New Member with no experience

[HersheySeaLions]

Hello, I am a new here. Oddly enough I have little to no experience in the technical theater career field. I am a currently a sophmore at Harrisburg Area Community College in PA. I am hoping to get a Bachlor's in Psychology and maybe Marine Biology when I transfer to Millersville University in the fall. For the past two years I've been working in the entertaiment business as an volunteer sea lion trainer, costume performer and show hostess at HersheyPark in Hershey, PA. My main career goal is to become a marine mammal trainer at SeaWorld Orlando. But I would like technical theater be my second career goal.

Like I said before I have little to no experience in tehcnical theater. But next summer at HersheyPark I would love to get my foot in the door as a stage hand and work my way up. I have a feeling I will not get the job despite of my lack of experience. My boyfriend is currently a techie and has been a techie for majority of his life! lol He has a lot of background in the business. I don't know if he is on the message board or not??

I did not take anything in high school relating to theater which I regret alot. was really busy in high school with other stuff that I did not have time to, but I did look into it. Like I said before I was a volunteer sea lion trainer at the Aquatheatre show at HersheyPark. I learned a little about stage direction, clean up, prop set up for every show, and I learned the basics of sound engineering because my boyfriend had to have off and I was going to do sound for a couple days...but that didn't go through. I also have done the actual educational sea lion show using microphone. I also took an intro theatre class in college. This is basically all the experience I have...

I am hoping to find a course or something that I can gain basic experience in stage hand before auditions in Feb. I live in the Central PA area so if anyone has any ideas please PM me! I hope that joining this forum I can learn some new things about this profession! Thanks!

 

[avkid]

A sea lion trainer, that's awesome!

 

[gafftaper]

Welcome to the Booth! I teach at a community college in Seattle. I offer an introductory course that teaches a little bit about everything in one quarter. However, I hate to burst your bubble, but the truth is a class like that isn't enough to get you a tech job. I simply can't cram enough information into 10 weeks to even scratch the surface of tech theater work. Furthermore, there are a lot of people out there, like your boyfriend, who may or may not have the course work, but who have years of real world experience. Anyone who's had a even a year of decent high school tech experience is probably going to get a job over you.

About the only way I can imagine you getting enough experience to be considered would be to take 2 or 3 classes and work on the crew for a show or two, read a couple books in your spare time, AND do a bunch of extra volunteer work in the shop. I suppose you could do all that in one quarter but most people would spend at least a year. Even then you would still only have enough training to be considered for the most basic jobs.

Most tech theater jobs have a certain amount of training and then require a lot of years of experience to prove you can do them under pressure before someone will hire you.

Sorry to disappoint you. Please stick around C.B. anyway, You'll learn a lot. Also take a class to get yourself started for next year.

 

[HersheySeaLions]

Thank you for your help! I uunderstand there is alot to know in this business but if I could learn the basics for small productions like animal shows and theme park shows I be fine with that. I am not looking into a big production.

I just recently found a local theatre that offers volunteer work with no prior experience needed so I hope to get into that. I also ordered the book called "Technical Theater for the Nontechnical Person" which I heard has great reviews!

Thank you again! I will surely stick around and hopefully learn some new things!