Technical theatre by Alex

Technical theatre by Alex - September 2017 Scholarship Essay

When I was a little eighth grader I had no idea what electives were. I was given a sheet with a bunch of classes on it and I was told to pick one. I immediately asked my high school sister what I should do and she told me to take technical theatre because she was taking it too. Next year I walked into the class room that everyone called “the black box” and my sister was there with her friends, and I sat next to the only kid I knew. Little did I know that after that year of high school, theatre would be a large part of my life.
Technical theatre is a class that shows how a theatrical performance is put on. We were taught how to design a set, how to draw a lighting plan, and we also learned how to scale a stage. The learning wasn’t the fun part, what we did when we weren’t in “class room mode” was. Throughout the year we built the sets and the props for the school plays. There was never a dull moment in that class, somedays we were building a train or a bridge, other days we had an assembly line of people making 1940’s cameras. I loved that class so much that the next year I became even more involved with the theatre.
My sophomore year of high school I not only took tech theatre II, I also joined the back-stage crew for the play. In my tech theatre II class, my friend from the previous year stuck with me and together we did everything. Not only did we take leadership positions when building large set pieces, but we were also given the hardest jobs. During the days were everyone else was learning, we were sent to the auditorium to hook up lights. After school I continued to build sets, but this time I was able to work with them after they were built. During the actual performances, I was back stage and every blackout I would run out and set the stage for the next scene.
Every year there are to productions, a play in the fall and a musical in the spring. During the musical of my sophomore year all of the tech kids were hanging out and I asked the senior sound kids who was going to take their place. They told me that they didn’t have anyone for next year, so I immediately volunteered myself for the job. For the remainder of my sophomore year of high school I was getting trained to run the sound booth. Junior year came and I was “sound master” It was my job to make sure everyone on stage was heard. I was in charge of the sound booth for the rest of my high school carrier.
Technical theatre helped me realize what I want to do with my life. I have grown to love the theatre, but my love for movies has always been stronger. Every since I was a little kid the movie theatre was my favorite place to be. Me and my sister bonded over Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, me and my friend frim tech theatre both bonded over the Marvel movies. Throughout all of high school I was known as “the Star Wars kid” because I would dress whenever a new Star Wars movie came out. Until I did technical theatre I thought that there was no way that I’d ever get the chance to world on a movie. My theatre teacher had a lighting designer form Broadway come in and talk to us about carriers in technical theatre. He was telling us about all of his experiences but there was one that really caught my attention. He told everyone that he was hired to be the lighting designer for a small budget movie. He told us that what he had learned doing technical theatre translated to movie production easily. I am now going pursuing a degree in cinematography, and I wouldn’t be if it weren’t for technical theatre.