Bay Area Technical Theatre Internships
By Christopher Morrison

You can scamper up a 20-foot A-frame ladder with nary a shudder, carrying a 15-pound piece of theatrical equipment that costs more than you make in half a year and install it. Or you can equalize the sound on a subwoofer that beats out time to a 1,000-seat house. Or you can color-coordinate 50 costumes on as many actors, get them dressed properly, deal with the star’s attitude about the, ahem, green dress you made her, plus get all those screaming kids on stage in their adorable little knickers that took 15 hours just to get the hems right. Or maybe you’re wondering just how to do these things.

Technical internships are a good place to start. The Bay Area’s technical internships have something for every interest at every level, from high school graduates to apprentices.

Maybe you’ve done some shows and want to look more into this “tech thing.” In other words, you are far from a pro but technical theatre sounds intriguing to you. The Bay Area’s smaller companies are always on the lookout for eager faces to help with the grunt work. They seldom pay, but they don’t demand much either. Show up and you will get to touch everything in sight. You will go up the ladder to hang the light, you will burn the CD cues for the show and even, according to Melissa Hillman, artistic director of Impact Theatre, “You can always be a board operator for us; we never have enough of those.”

Direct, hands-on experience with people who need you can be had at the many smaller-to-midsize companies in the Bay Area, including Shotgun Players, Crowed Fire, African American Shakespeare and the Exit Theatre.

Best of all: It’s all hands on. These people need you, and they needed you yesterday. You will get your hands dirty very, very quickly.

Worst of all: No formal training. You get your hands dirty, yes, but who’s to say if you got them dirty in the best possible way?

Young people just out of high school and looking for something a bit more organized than “show up, do the work” can check out SF Run Crew at Brava Center for the Arts. Jenny Figueroa, the master trainer, calls the Run Crew a “skills-based job training program,” not an internship. Figueroa says that the goals of the Run Crew are to “provide technical training and ‘soft’ skills. ‘Soft’ meaning work ethic, time management and general professionalism.”
Brava offers three sessions (October to December, February to April, and June to August) of 12 weeks each. Each session offers the students a general technical curriculum. They spend time with lights, sound, scenic construction, some props and some stage management. The last two weeks are spent in collaboration with Performance Workshop students (Run Crew’s sister acting program at Brava) creating that session’s show. Students also take tests, or as Figueroa calls them “midcycle evaluations.” Each evaluation lasts two days. Day one is the written and day two is an individual appointment in which the staff evaluates a student’s performance.

Figueroa notes that no prior experience is necessary and that most of her students have just graduated high school and are kids of color. “Being located in the Mission has given us access to the kids that most other programs are trying to attract.” She also notes that she always seems to have “an even split of the sexes” in her classes. Brava doesn’t skimp on the opportunities either; they also have hired students from the Run Crew to be, well, run crew. They facilitate job placement as well by farming out job requests that they get from other theatre companies to their former students.

Best of all: It’s free. It’s only about a 6 to 10 hour commitment a week, and the students receive a $200 “reward” for completing the program.

Worst of all: Jack of all trades, master of none. If you want a broad introduction to technical theatre, this is the place to go. If you want more specifics, you may want to look elsewhere.

Over on the other side of the Mission lies a different opportunity for the technically minded, at The Marsh. It has the Monday Night Marsh series, where at least four new works per show see the light of day. The Marsh also does, roughly, 12 runs a season (shows that have more than a week run). There is the “White Box” (an upstairs rental space) and the Mock Café, which presents new work constantly.

While there is no formal technical internship per se, there is an assistant to the resident technical director (or lighting designer, depending on which position happens to be filled). “As the assistant, this person shadows the technical director [or lighting designer] in all their functions as fits the assistant’s schedule,” says Stephanie Weisman, artistic director of The Marsh. The assistant also runs the board for the Monday Night Marsh series and any of the coproductions.

The TD or LD invites the assistant to every hang, focus and strike of each show. This is where the real instruction begins. The assistant crawls over every piece of equipment, gets to know the sound and the light system and becomes very intimate with the computer lighting board. The assistant also gets paid for running the lighting board during shows. The Marsh’s connections run deep. The last assistant, Jason Branch, gleefully exclaimed, “I got to run lights for Robin Williams! OK, I just turned the lights on and off. But it was for Robin Williams!”

Best of all: One-on-one instruction. It’s just you and the man or woman above you. It fits your schedule; you literally get out what you put in.

Worst of all: It fits your schedule. If you don’t make this internship a priority, you won’t get much out of it (and they’ll find someone else).

If you want the work, the training, the exposure and to work on some of the most respected stages in the country, step up to American Conservatory Theater and Berkeley Repertory Theatre. While it’s less than likely that you can walk in off the street with these nationally known companies, for those who are ready to make the commitment to a technical theatre career, these two companies are ideal. Jennifer Caleshu, ACT’s internship coordinator, says that most of her interns are “right out of college and want the experience that a LORT A house can give them.”

ACT offers 10 production department internships: costume rental (design), costume shop (build), lighting, properties, sound, stage management, technical design, wig construction and makeup, production management and (when necessary) production assistant. It’s a big company with a big commitment on your part. “Most interns work nine to five,” claims Caleshu.

Caleshu also refers to her program as a “training program,” but ACT has no classes. “It’s hands on—you jump right in the first day.” They also offer monthly seminars (called intern roundtables) with the rest of the professional staff once a month. “We try to give our interns a sense of the whole business of theatre.” Also around February the artistic and technical staff sit down with the interns and go over their portfolios and résumés to ensure they are in top shape.

Cynthia Quiroga, who was an intern in ACT’s costume rental shop (and now works there full-time), credits her internship with starting her on her path as a costume designer. “I just came off a wardrobe styling gig for Lucent Technologies that I attribute directly to the internship and the knowledge I gained at ACT.” It also helped that the gentleman that hired her worked with her at ACT while she was there. The connections one gains at a big house such as ACT is one of its greatest appeals. Caleshu notes, “ACT has at least two former interns working as full-time staff members right now. I was an artistic department intern myself. A lot of times an internship with us jump-starts someone’s career.”

Best of all: Did we mention that they pay? Interns get paid minimum wage (and get overtime during tech week).

Worst of all: No housing offered, and it’s a union house so you might get more “hands-off!” than hands on. It’s against union rules for nonunion workers to even touch equipment associated with a union job. Then again, you should get used to union rules if you plan to work at ACT’s level.

Berkeley Repertory Theatre also tends to look for people with a little experience under their belt. Although William Leggett, the head of their intern program, was on vacation at the writing of this article, the rep’s Web site says, “The Internship Program provides an opportunity to work under Berkeley Rep’s professional staff, helping to support the high quality production standards for which the Rep continues to win numerous accolades.” Lucas Krech, lighting intern for the 1999-2000 season, echoes these sentiments. “I did everything Michael Howden [then master electrician] did, and then some.”

Berkeley Rep provides housing for some of its interns; Krech was one of the lucky. “With my housing paid for, the 40 plus hour weeks were affordable.” Krech lived in a house in west Berkeley—and not in one of the nicest neighborhoods. The interns get set up as roommates, so it can get sticky living with the people you are working with. But Krech’s internship hit at a very good time with the opening of the new Roda theatre. “I learned a lot of new skills because of both buildings. There will be a lot of opportunities there in the future, just through sheer volume,” including costumes, lighting/electrics, properties, scenic construction, scenic painting, sound and stage management.

Best of all: Pay and housing? You can’t beat that with a stick.

Worst of all: Much like ACT, this is a full-time job. Yes, you get paid, but it isn’t that much. You have to juggle some serious numbers to make it work.

If you look at all the above and match it up to your tech career goals and desires, you are bound to find an internship that will fit your needs. In addition, there are plenty of other companies that offer internships or are looking for tech help, such as San Jose Repertory Theatre, the Willows Theatre and Marin Theatre Company. After one of these internships you could be in serious demand in a region where technical theatre help is in short supply.

Christopher Morrison is a tech whiz, and founded Broken Buddha Productions.