In fifth grade, the whole class was doing a talent show or something of that nature. I was not going to go on that
stage. I just wasn't. I instead said that I would run the three wall
dimmer switches off to the side of the
stage (it was a
multi-purpose room, not a real
theatre space). Sixth grade, I'd heard stories from my dad who did lights back in his high school days and had befriended the art teacher who also became the
theatre person. There was a school-wide musical that one of the teachers was directing, and I got on the crew as lighting guy. Some old controller that I think was a Dove Scenemaster, a couple of parcans and fresnels (all on L11 stands), and I was off to the races. They forgot to put my name in the program that year as the lighting person; I made the programs for the musicals, band events (I was a part of the band) and several other events. My name was in the program at least 3 times in each one.
7th grade the school got some basic lighting equipment, which I used for several shows in 7th and 8th grade. In the summer between 7th and 8th grade (I think - I may be wrong here, it may have been the summer before), I attended a Shakespeare camp at the high school. I attended because a number of my friends were, and I figured it would be fun. It was; there was
stage combat and actual fencing classess - but the best part was that I became the "
stage manager" for the show, which in that sense meant that I was in charge of all of the scene changes with the minimal scenery that we had.
Freshman year I showed up to high school and went right to the
theatre teacher (who knew almost nothing about tech), and asked to be on the crew, and got on as a lighting op. I later learned that she hated freshmen, but I somehow got through that. I was the king of the booth at my high school in short order, and I made numerous improvements and redid many things. I even got a budget a couple of times. Summer between junior and senior years I went to a summer program where I discovered what an
ETC Express was and what a
Source Four was and that shows didn't have to be lights-up/lights-down like they were at my school. I returned and made major changes; I also got us the old light board from said summer program (
Colortran Encore) that replaced the "Lightronics CrapBox 5000X". I should add that I joined
ControlBooth just months after that summer program - wow I've been here a while...
When I started looking at colleges, I was looking for a school for what I thought would be Electrical Engineering or something similar, but I went to the
theatre dept. at each school. I went in to the office of the TD at Bucknell, not knowing where I wanted to go and not thinking that
theatre would be my major, and left knowing that I wanted to do
theatre for the rest of my life and that Bucknell was where I was going to learn about it. I ended up with a
theatre merit scholarship and participated in about every tech organization on campus at some
point or another. I only took two electrical engineering type courses (one EE and one Physics dept. Applied Electronics - both well worth it, though).