Dana Taylor

Dana W. Taylor spent over twenty-five years teaching technical theatre at the Mt. Vernon Senior High School Fine Arts Academy (Mt. Vernon, IN). He is a writer in the area of technical theatre and served ten years as the technical editor for Dramatics Magazine and Teaching Theatre Journal.

Dana started as his school’s choir teacher and was drafted into being the auditorium manager due to his classroom’s proximity to the newly built theater. Dana received the 2014 Distinguished Achievement Award in Education from USITT. Michael Mehler, Chair of the Awards & Resolutions Committee, called him “one of the most knowledgeable people involved in technical theatre education at the secondary school level.” 

Transcription is computer generated. Please excuse the typos.

[00:00:02.440] – Scott
Hi, everyone, welcome to turn this volume off over here. Welcome to Stage Seminars new series of talking to teachers who teach tech, I have our special guest here, Dana Taylor, who has who is on the who’s on the bleeding edge of teaching tech through, well, trial by fire and a lot of ways. And he’s joining us to kick off this new interview series. We’re going to be talking about certain techniques about teaching tech, why, why and how drama teachers, music teachers, band teachers and others who aren’t familiar with their technology in their schools can gain value from figuring out how to teach tech and working with their students and such.

[00:00:53.790] – Scott
So I’m thrilled that Dana is our first guest. Dana, why don’t you give us a quick synopsis of what your background is and and how you got started with with teaching in high school?

[00:01:09.910] – Dana
OK, first of all, Scott, thanks for having me on today. This is where I usually tell a class I have absolutely no background in theater. I have a degree I have a degree in music education, choral general and a master’s degree in choral conducting. When I got my first teaching job, they were in the midst of renovating the auditorium. My office was next door and I was named auditorium manager. So suddenly I had to be responsible for all this equipment.

[00:01:43.150] – Dana
I did not understand. One of my colleagues at the school, the theater teacher, started a technical theater class the second year I was there. And so I was I was asked to team teach it with him. I did audio. I did know some about audio, but knew nothing else. Then his his assignment changed, the industrial technology teacher came in the next year and then he promptly retired and then it was just me. Initially, what I knew about tech theater technology was learned just ahead of the kids needing to learn something.

[00:02:24.360] – Dana
So learning about programing, the Light plot are learning something about sound. Learning something about construction. Tool usage. After doing this for the better part of 30 years, you do get better at it. But I think what you discover after 30 years is how much you don’t know that there’s there’s always more to learn.

[00:02:50.250] – Scott
That is so true. I like to to share with people things. I like to present them with the concept of teaching them about the questions they didn’t even know to ask. Yeah. You know, what do I not know what a question is? Don’t you don’t I even know to ask you?

[00:03:10.590] – Dana
Well, and that’s that is when I work with teachers at seminars and workshops and the like, they are eager to learn. They will ask something you think, but that’s OK. You don’t know this. You don’t understand that this is. Know the that move in light that you like so much can’t function on a dimmer, it has to have a constant circuit. It does when when it fades down, it’s actually a mechanical device that’s shuddering. It’s not actually getting dimmer.

[00:03:48.380] – Dana
And and the assumption that you just know things and but you but you don’t. And so it’s it’s always a challenge to figure out where they are and their knowledge base and what can we help them make sure we listen to what the question really is. I mean, I see things online that someone asks a very straightforward question. How do I. And there’ll be twenty seven answers pretty much unrelated to it and why and why their position is the right position, but it really had nothing to do with the question that was asked.

[00:04:25.150] – Dana
They simply cannot do this right.

[00:04:28.750] – Scott
I see so many, so many answers that are are like, no, you can’t. Or this is why it’s dangerous. Instead of saying, OK, yes, you can, but these are the steps you need to do it either safely or economically and so on.

[00:04:43.000] – Dana
Yeah, because there there are rarely things that you can’t do. They may be cost prohibitive. They may exceed your expertize, which means you got to bring in somebody else to do it. It’s like doing doing flying effects. I guess conceptually I understand how that works, but I’m not going to put a harness on a kid and send them into the air, although I’ve seen it done. Yes, completely. I, I was I was playing in the pit orchestra for production of Will Rogers Follies.

[00:05:18.150] – Dana
Well, this was this was nearly 30 years ago and. Wills, I think, as Wills father appears throughout the play, as I recall, and so he came in from heaven, he wrote a pipe baton on the stage. I. You know, in retrospect, you think. How do they even let him do that anyway, so.

[00:05:45.570] – Scott
I get it, I understand flying is one of those things that people want to do, Peter Pan or Mary Poppins or or whatnot, it’s it’s you you’ve you’ve shot way to the top of the wish list and the danger list in the same sentence. So just for our viewers, so, you know, to the right side of your to the right side of our pictures, there should be a window that allows you to put in some chat. You can say, you know, hello or where you’re from and whatnot.

[00:06:20.160] – Scott
Next set, there’s a Q&A box menu that you can ask questions. You can ask questions in the chat as well. But there is a Q&A that will pop up on our list of questions that we should be asking or answering. There’s a poll, but we haven’t created any polls for today’s session. And then there’s PAR to raise your hand at any point. If you have a question and I can invite you on stage if you want to verbalize or whatnot and join the conversation.

[00:06:46.900] – Scott
So by all means, use that window to the right to say hello and and whatnot. So. What so you started as a choir teacher and and we chatted and you said Sorley choir music theory and music appreciation and you what was your first tech class and and what? Lifting back on it. What do you wish you had known? And have you learned that?

[00:07:24.450] – Dana
You know, in retrospect, I wish I wish I had been. I wish I had a greater sense of common sense when I first started out. I think back to things that I did when I had students do and how did we avoid disaster? Mm hmm. And it’s not even it’s not even a question of will that require deep thought? No, not really. If you take something off on this side of the arbor. Something on the other side of the harbor could go dreadfully wrong that.

[00:08:04.900] – Dana
Yes, that feels. Looks strong, feels pretty strong, is not necessarily the answer, adding yet another cross brace may not may not really solve the basic problem that but again, this was this was a circumstance that I lacked training in construction. I lacked training in lots of things with lighting. I wish I had paid more attention to some of the things that people told me because I really didn’t get it. I’m like a lot of people, I have to get it wrong several times before I finally understand whether there’s a lot of teachers who come through teacher education programs, whether states require or not that require their during their study to take a class, perhaps, you know, if we’re lucky and they just take an intro internal lighting, and that satisfies the requirement.

[00:09:06.270] – Dana
And then there they land a job in a school with a rigging system or an audio system or whatnot, and hopefully they have some technical help. When you started out, you had a technical teacher working with you in the first year or two.

[00:09:21.910] – Dana
So, you know, he was he was basically the stage director with some understanding of set construction. That he had gotten during his undergraduate. He knew more than I knew and did at the time that we did get some he helped. Like when I did my first choir concert, I think he was the one that got the sound going for me because it was a pretty awful sound system, that first year of. The lighting was opening. Not great by any stretch of the imagination, you know, like bored, just a bunch of real stats on the wall and then that that all went away during the course.

[00:10:11.180] – Dana
The first year after the musical was over, my students and I were tasked with gutting the auditorium of stuff on stage and stuff that was in storage. Because they were going to renovate. And which they did and the renovation took the better part of a year, we were dislocated choir was was held in the rear of the auditorium while the work was going on inside. Concerts were done in the cafeteria. And when we do finally get to go back, it was really quite something we’d never had anything so elaborate.

[00:10:52.650] – Dana
And I will say one thing was with my school corporation, which was it was Mt. Vernon Senior High School Party. Excuse me a second. My landline is ringing and so in the chat. Hello, Stevie. Glad to have you here. There are other people from your phone, a chat. Say hello. We’re going to be talking further with Dana about his background, how he started USITT group, some other groups that he’s worked with, and he’s back.

[00:11:29.150] – Dana
Did you have so performance teachers, whether it’s quiet choir drama, teachers and whatnot, you often have people who want to be involved but don’t necessarily want to be on stage and perform. Did you find you had kids who wanted to contribute and be a part of the club or part of the activities who didn’t want to perform and how did you get them and offer them sort of like this alternate avenues?

[00:11:56.360] – Dana
Well, when we when we were renovated and had all this new shiny equipment, we had students not necessarily lining up, but we did have students who are expressing an interest in doing and doing stuff. That and and we at that point, we had started the technical theater class, and so it was pretty rudimentary things, but we had I had a boy that first year with the new equipment who figured out how to program on the light board, something that the drama teacher and I had not figured out yet.

[00:12:34.510] – Dana
And it became his own. And he knew how to program cues and he wasn’t letting the rest of us figure it out.

[00:12:44.440] – Scott
That’s hilarious. What other kids say. It was a teaching other kids how to program.

[00:12:50.020] – Dana
Oh, no. It was like the light board became his domain that year. And and and I get it that we were so overwhelmed with all the stuff we had. Now, though, I mean, we had battens that would come down to stage level. You could hang lights. We had never had stage rigging of any type. We’d never had a light board. We we had audio console. But but it was pretty it was pretty cheap, you know, I think Beatles.

[00:13:21.610] – Dana
Shea Stadium.

[00:13:23.740] – Scott
Yes.

[00:13:25.000] – Dana
Not so.

[00:13:25.810] – Scott
They’re going on us on off on a tangent for just a moment is you mention that the batten’s come down. I seem to remember that you created a video or how to or you did a presentation on bounce focusing. Did you not some sort of using a computer or some sort of yeah, it’s it was. It was a clean ometer in our theater, we never had access to the they whenever it height, OK? This was not a possibility for us.

[00:13:56.930] – Scott
We did there was a genie left in the school, but not necessarily available to us and a woeful lack of training on how to use it. Yeah, it’s kind of like regardless, we were trying to figure out a way to focus lights that would speed up the process because sometimes it was just gas in check. You pretty much could always get it aimed in the right direction, but rarely could you guess the angle on so and so. I was I was talking about this with a math colleague at the school who said, you know, you could use a clean ometer and it’s a tool they use in math.

[00:14:38.950] – Scott
It’s how you can compute the height of of buildings. And it has to do with the angle of depression and then fairly simple, fairly simple math that, you know, if this is 90 degrees, this is forty five. If if I, if I if I’m pointing at the light, I want to focus and it’s at it’s at forty five degrees then I can take I can bring the light down, use an angle measure which is another cheap math tool you can buy with the angle measure on the yoke of the fixture.

[00:15:22.820] – Scott
You know, loosen the light, bring up forty five degrees, tying down Florida should be in the right place. This did help a lot and well and is going back to going back to discussions we had years ago, you know, when an administrator would stop by your classroom and now you can talk about fractions when you’re measuring lumber and turn it into a math lesson. It was something it was something interesting. And and I don’t know that it was revolutionary, but if you are in a circumstance where you can’t you can’t access your fixtures.

[00:16:01.460] – Scott
Then this is a way of hopefully speeding things up a little bit.

[00:16:07.350] – Scott
OK, now I believe you created a PowerPoint or something. If in the past some sort of guide or video or some presentation, am I right on that?

[00:16:20.170] – Dana
I’ve done several what what was the subject, the bounce focusing?

[00:16:24.570] – Dana
Oh, yeah. Can I share my screen?

[00:16:29.520] – Scott
I think you can. Or we can also get a link to it and can post it where it says present to audience. Yeah, try that. OK, just a second. Let’s see if that works. I can select a PDF. I can share screen. Let me let me find it first. OK. OK, give me just a second.

[00:16:52.020] – Scott
And so those of you listening in the chat, how many of you have access to the lights when there are height and how many of you have to focus from the floor and be interesting to see that that would be a good pole? Although I didn’t make the whole. OK, all right, all right, that’s Joshua. So how do you how do you get up there, Josh, right. Oh, OK. So you’re nancies on the floor.

[00:17:24.080] – Scott
Tom, is that right, and Josh uses a latter. Stephen, as I said, he has raised his hand, let’s see. This is the first time I’m doing this. It says and Mike, let’s see, let’s do that. And Stephen is joining us. Oh, you ready to join us? I don’t know. Well, welcome to the screen. We can hear you.

[00:17:51.970] – Dana
Oh, good. You can turn me off because was just I was just saying, yes, I’ve got I’ve got ways to get to the lights.

[00:17:59.140] – Scott
Oh, got it. OK, I’m not sure how to turn you off. Oh, here we go by. He has left the stage.

[00:18:17.390] – Dana
OK, I did I did find you, I can try sharing my screen.

[00:18:21.350] – Scott
That sounds great.

[00:18:24.290] – Dana
This was this was actually something that I presented at this year’s USITT conference when we did a session on low tech solutions to problems that you may encounter. Let’s face it, a lot of things we do because we are pretty low tech solutions, because it’s what we can afford to do. True. Well and well, that didn’t work quite the way I thought it would choose what to share. Sure. The entire.

[00:19:00.220] – Scott
Let’s see if this is going to work so far. There we go. Well, if you can’t see the entire thing, you may need to make your screen wider, your browser wider, so your window gets bigger.

[00:19:13.460] – Dana
OK, Scott, I mean, that’s great.

[00:19:16.600] – Scott
Yeah, you can’t, but we can.

[00:19:19.090] – Dana
OK, then how do I know where I am right now?

[00:19:22.060] – Scott
We see the air meet. Click on the. There you go. Now we see your chrome window with a slide show that isn’t playing its eyes on the left.

[00:19:33.880] – Dana
Yeah. OK, let me get it started. I love them. Oh, we. OK, this is focusing a light with a clean ometer, and in this case, rather than purchasing a clean ometer from the meth store or from your teacher supply, you can get 1″ as an app. The one on the one on the right is actually the one that I had at school. And it was it was 30 bucks, the app was cheaper. OK, the issue with the app is that trying trying to make it work correctly, so you with with the physical klyn ometer, it was easy to understand what you were looking at and to do the math.

[00:20:29.020] – Dana
This made it a little bit more of a challenge. But regardless, the idea is you’re standing on deck in the position you should like to point and then point ometer at the light that’s hanging on the baton. And note the angle, this is the angle of elevation. OK, OK, then, having established the tremolite. Lower the baton, using the baton to zero degrees, place the phenomena on the barrel housing and adjust the tilt to sixty degrees.

[00:21:06.690] – Dana
This is the angle of depression. So going back, a slide. The.

[00:21:20.990] – Scott
So were you able to did you include your math teacher in any of these or maybe the math classes? I had a good no, we did not. I had I was teaching in a when I first started, I was teaching a K through 12 school, and I had the fifth grade math teacher, I think was the fifth grade. We were chatting about how to do things together and she was covering x y coordinates, graph paper work and graphing things out and that sort of thing.

[00:21:56.120] – Scott
So she brought her class up and they taped out my stage well, using x Y coordinates from the plaster center line intersection, you know, and measuring out and over. And so they put their x y coordinate work to real life.

[00:22:11.780] – Dana
What school it was I used to I used to have my beginning students. So they get an idea of how to tape out the stage that we we would. We would hand them a piece of paper, they would draw the stage, then they would add coordinates, points within that by by feet and inches, upstage and stage left, stage right and, you know. It was interesting because what thwarted them initially was their ability to make the tape go the right direction to keep it straight.

[00:22:50.600] – Dana
And, you know, you saw some really well done examples, but people sometimes students were just fighting the tape. Got it. OK, then we would return the baton to trim and adjustments are likely to be made. But but it it was better than just the guess and check and established. And again, this is one of those things that we did that wasn’t by any stretch fancy, but we thought it a good way to solve a problem that we were having.

[00:23:24.650] – Dana
And you know, I’ve shown this to some people, they’ve got all yeah that because whatever whatever their circumstance was, they weren’t allowed to they weren’t weren’t allowed on ladders, light plot or whatever. And now I’ve got to find you again because I’ve lost you.

[00:23:47.730] – Scott
Is that your computer that is giving us the ding? Oh, there we go. No, it’s back.

[00:23:53.550] – Dana
I have no idea. Yes, it’s my computer browsing is. OK. I don’t know either or whatever it was.

[00:24:11.410] – Scott
OK, OK, cool. Well, that’s a great solution to something that I know a lot of people run into with with not being able allowed to use ladders or not. Usually schools. We use insurance as the reason why. So it’s it’s unfortunate that some schools have to resort to that, but, you know, you’ve come up with a great solution. Do you have other questions? Let’s let’s switch gears for a minute, because one of the most active things that you’ve been doing of late or over the past several years has been involved with USITT.

[00:24:52.960] – Scott
Now, Dana is a USITT Distinguished Achievement Award winner from the Education Commission. And yet, well, so is Scott.

[00:25:05.340] – Scott
So so am I. And Dana actually nominated me, which was very, very nice of you. Thank you very much. And it was a great honor to be in the company of some incredible people. And both Dana and I were were wondering how we ended up in such a state with sharing the same kind of award with me, actually. But that’s a whole other conversation or a consonant and a vowel.

[00:25:30.930] – Scott
There you go. So how did you get involved with USITT? And there was a question on one of the Facebook forums, the Technical Theater Educators Forum, which is a terrific resource. For those of you that don’t know about it, just search technical theater teachers on Facebook and join the group. There was a question on how those can high school students be part of a USITT student chapter. So can you tell us how you got involved and a little bit about the student chapter?

[00:26:02.400] – Dana
Sure. I’m going to suggest maybe nineteen ninety six or so. I became aware of USITT and read more about it. And this was pretty this was pretty early in computer usage of the Internet and in schools. We had email by that time, but not a lot more anyway. Became aware of it and thought well this could be a great organization. I didn’t know at the time that there weren’t any high school student chapters and not knowing any better, I just I called to see if we could do this.

[00:26:41.220] – Dana
They had had high school chapters in the past, but at that point we would be the only one. But it seemed like a good thing to do for my students, you know. Mount Vernon High School is in the it is as far south as far west as you can go in the state of Indiana. We know Mt. Vernon is on the way to nowhere. There’s quite literally there is a swamp on the other side of town and then the river than Illinois.

[00:27:15.060] – Dana
Or if you go the other way, you go to Kentucky. We always used to say we sit at the confluence of the of the Ohio and Wabash Rivers. We Kentucky’s immediately to our south Illinois, immediately to our west. We are a people with options and but we had no resources as such. And so I thought this would be good for my kids, that they can somehow. Become involved with an organization that is so expansive, so we joined with the student chapter, I believe in nineteen ninety eight at that time, and I think it’s still the case that you had to have you had to have a faculty advisor.

[00:27:58.640] – Dana
And that was me who was who belonged to USITT. And then you had that six student members. You could have more members than that, but there had to be six paid memberships and that is still the case for colleges, but they’ve changed it for high schools. The teacher has to go along the USITT, but high school students do not. That’s that’s a help because, you know, yes, a student student may be able to come up with whatever the student dues are.

[00:28:37.060] – Dana
I don’t remember they might be able to come up with that much money. But it also seems like it would be it’s going to it’s going to keep out ones who might wish to be in his camp.

[00:28:51.160] – Scott
So there are many, many, many schools that have thespian society troupe and the the K through 12 school that I was in, we had a troupe as well, and we had a few kids who were thespian society members. But it was really seem to be geared more towards performance as opposed to the tech side of things. So how would you compare it? Did you guys have a thespian troupe?

[00:29:16.780] – Dana
Yes, we did. And it was as as you just described, it was it was about acting and nothing in regard to the technical side. Yes. The technicians were acknowledged, but there was EDTA Educational Theater Association, which runs thespians, has never really had any sort of technical theater focus. It’s always been acknowledged. There are articles I was the technical director for their publications for 10 years that and I would write articles when people like you to write articles.

[00:29:57.850] – Dana
So there typically was something technical in nearly every issue, but it was it was not the obvious focus and.

[00:30:09.990] – Scott
In the chat, folks, visitors, do you guys have thespian groups, are you interested in forming a USITT group? Do you have any other kind of clubs? I know that there are there’s there’s a group that does high school like Mini Tony Awards, my friend, who they are. But they they will give awards across the board, I think. Like I said, I’ve forgotten which group it was, but I was tickled to see that they do that.

[00:30:39.240] – Scott
What would you say about Gene Kelly’s? What would you say has been how involved with your kids, with USITT? I’ve seen you with your kids at USITT. Can you tell our crowd what they. Get out of USITT and what they did at the national conference.

[00:31:10.600] – Dana
Yes, just trying to think where to start with this one. One thing they got out of USITT initially, and I recall from the first year we went, which was in Minneapolis, and they were just they walked into the expo floor and were just. And that’s and folks, if you if you’ve been if you’ve been to USITT, like in the early 2000s and went to USITT in Louisville, the last one we had, the show floor is about quadrupled in size.

[00:31:47.040] – Dana
If you look at the show floor from twenty three and yeah there were people there but not much is now so they were quite wide eyed. Several years ago, we were we were in Houston for a conference and this this was a great memory that I have of them, that it was towards the end of the day, shopfloor was getting ready to close. They were pooped and they were I found them in the back. And they were sitting at this big round table.

[00:32:21.300] – Dana
So they realized who they were sitting with. OK, because. There there was there was Roger Latin, I don’t know if you ever do any work as well, Julatten from California, from the film industry. There was Eddie Kramer. From Radio City and and they’re just sitting there kind of resting and Eddie’s phone rings and he’s and he takes it out of his pocket and he walks away for a minute and comes back, sits down, says Madonna’s having problems because Madonna was at Radio City, 1″.

[00:33:02.690] – Dana
I thought, this is so cool. My students get to hang out with really cool people and they don’t really know who they are. And that is something something that we did at that school. A phrase that we came up with at some point was, was putting your kids in the same room as excellence. USITT allowed my kids. At the high school to be around people who were really good at what they did and they it was inspirational for them.

[00:33:33.160] – Dana
It was. It was, yes, it was completely unusual that, you know, not that we had the largest high school presence. That’s not the case. But the fact that the kids were consistently going to conference, that they kind of knew their way around one year. I can’t think where we were. You had some of them sit on the panel discussing technical theater at the secondary level, which they thought was pretty cool. I remember that and that.

[00:34:07.810] – Dana
By and large, I think one of the great things that USITT does is it introduces them to a community that they would not have known that is just, by their nature, happy to help, to lend a hand, to give some advice, to show you how and not make fun of you because you don’t know you know it. This is an industry. Yes, there are companies like ETCP that employ hundreds of people, but most of the companies are kind of like, oh, shoot, say his name, Dr.

[00:34:48.520] – Dana
DMX. I can’t say Flener what most companies are like. Doug Fleener. It’s a handful. It’s a handful of people.

[00:35:02.290] – Scott
This is another bill. Synapses, you know that. Yes. Big name, relatively small company. And you have you have others that are like that, that if you call the company, they’re just as likely to be the one who answers the phone. And but how much they do enjoy, how much they do enjoy being involved with people of of this notoriety or of the skill set and find out that they’re pretty normal people. Mm hmm. I’m looking at I’m looking at questions.

[00:35:44.290] – Scott
That just came up. How do you balance having a thespian troupe in a USITT chapter membership? I love the idea of this, but stress over the amount of resources, time and ability to be involved with both as well. I was never involved with both. I did. I did the USITT chapter. My cohort did. Did the thespians after he retired, I did take over thespians, but honestly, at that point, USITT had become less active.

[00:36:21.020] – Scott
I didn’t have I didn’t have the number of kids who were as deeply interested as I had had at various times. Hmm. And I think that’s you know, that’s that’s like with any program you’re going to have you’re going to have some really rich times when you’ve got kids who are eager to do anything and everything you’re going to have times is they just seem completely unmotivated.

[00:36:45.020] – Scott
It is a it’s a huge cycle. And I mean, I haven’t taught in K through 12 in a while, so I don’t know how the current crop of kids is doing. But I know that I was thinking just today, I was wondering if teachers could pull their students to see what the current favorite like movies are. You know, it’s because my kids get a majority of their entertainment on YouTube, so it’s hard to even have a common conversation about movies or certain actors or whatnot.

[00:37:17.870] – Scott
Maybe it’s showing our age, but it’s, you know, and then with YouTube, even with different kids, you know, there are kids that will talk with each other and 1″ will be a YouTube follower of this group and another one will be over there. So it’s not even long. Gone are the days when we were restricted to half a dozen TV channels and you had only a few choices of what you’re going to watch. So you had a more common thread of conversation.

[00:37:44.090] – Scott
Yeah. So it’s a I guess it depends on the balancing between thespian and USITT can certainly be a challenge depending on on the resources and and how involved the kids are and also how far away the national conference is from you on a on a given year.

[00:38:03.290] – Dana
Yeah. That when we would take students to national conference, one of the things that we did with our chapter was we started doing workshops. In technical theater and we would invite other high schools, and initially it was like local college professors, theater teachers come in and do a session. They bring some of their students. I remember our very first one we did on stage at my school. And it was the it was the lighting designer from the University of Evansville and some of your students.

[00:38:39.120] – Dana
And they came in and talked about lighting zone. And so that was that was a good thing. And then my students enjoyed it. And we had a couple of folks from Evansville. Nearby community, large community come forward. We also we also. We’re getting a little bit of a name for ourselves because, you know, among my colleagues and so we started doing lighting for area high schools and then and then one of my students, director for the became operations director for the Evansville Philharmonic.

[00:39:21.250] – Dana
And so she talked, she she convinced them that we should do moving light programing for the peppermint pops, and so we did. And another friend said, you know, we’re going to do this big fundraiser for for a local charity. Would you would you build the set and do the lighting and leko? We’re 20 years into what is called the really big show where my students built the SAT and did the lighting. I still do the lighting. We’re 15 years or so into preprint pops.

[00:39:59.460] – Dana
We didn’t we didn’t use the high school this last year because we didn’t do the covid took care of the concert. This was this was a way that we could make money. By doing the other high schools and doing these events, and that’s how we paid for USITT memberships for the students, but if we saved, well, then we could also afford we could also afford to fly them to Long Beach or to Houston and pay for their hotels and.

[00:40:33.040] – Dana
Yeah, or when it was in Louisville, just drive to Louisville, I will say get to know people with the companies at conference because I became friends with Ellen White at ETCP. It’s like two thousand five. She was quite fascinated that our high school was so active in technical theater. Well, my students ended up being the demonstrators for four eighty six new Smart Faid technology.

[00:41:01.250] – Scott
I remember that year and and the kids had a good time. They got ETCP polo shirts and at the end of the conference we got we got a nice smart fade as our pay. Very nice. Forty eight. Ninety six. The school still has it and still uses it anyway. That’s great. That was a that was a way to help finance what we were doing.

[00:41:26.180] – Scott
Those of you that in the chat, I’m wondering what boards you have. We’re not going to get much further in the boards. The smart grid is a is a is a very functional small board for four schools that don’t have moving lights. They won’t be moving lights unless you do channel PAR per channel and DMX because you can do very basic stuff.

[00:41:46.190] – Dana
There is a smart there was a smart kid Emelle that you could do with.

[00:41:52.160] – Scott
Got it. The colors are the new color sauce board will do moving lights, it’s a little clunky because it’s a touch screen. You don’t the dials, but but you can get them to work. And it’s it’s it’s not a bad budget board.

[00:42:04.820] – Dana
You can do moving light on an express console, but it’s not easy.

[00:42:08.540] – Scott
Oh, that was the first I was bored I had at the high school. I was out for a while and we used the first movie. Lights we brought in were truck spots with the moving mirror. Yes. You only needed, let’s say one, two, I think well, maybe five or six channels 1/4″ the intensity 1/4″ x 1/4″ y another four gobodo and another three four color. So I want to move on to another area that’s near and dear to your height because your heart I have put your your title as teacher consultant and ESET Cat Wrangler.

[00:42:44.510] – Scott
Tell us what he said is yes.

[00:42:50.480] – Dana
ESET is essential skills for entertainment technicians. It was originally created by the ESTA Foundation. Around twenty two, twenty three ESTA, the Entertainment Services Technology Association, created a philanthropic and educational. Partner. The ESTA Foundation, part of the ESTA Foundation, was to was guidance for and leadership in a charitable program called Behind the Scenes. Then they also had an educational arm that that was part of doing the ETCP Entertainment Technician certification program. Also, they were looking at doing offering training around the country.

[00:43:45.520] – Dana
It was all well intentioned, some of it worked great, some of it didn’t work so great. They discovered that teaching classes in technical theater at an advanced level, it was really it was really difficult to get people to come. If you were in Toronto, you weren’t nobody from Austin was going to show up. Because it became cost prohibitive and for travel in time, even if they didn’t charge very much. That being said, one of the things came out of this meeting with the ETCP was, OK, we’re offering this the certification program for individuals at the upper tier of the industry because you have a thousand hours in as a rigger, that you’ve got all these years of experience and training, et cetera.

[00:44:40.640] – Dana
You qualify to take our test. And if you pass, then you are a you are a certified theater rigger or a certified arena recruiter or a certified certified entertainment electrician, literally card carrying. Person, you’re an expert. The question was immediately asked, what about? The bottom end of things, what what is ETCP, what is Doug Flener, what is Strand, what is your name, your manufacturer or your dealer or your rental house? What are they looking for from a potential new hire?

[00:45:25.900] – Dana
What do they wish? Those individuals knew. Someone joked and said, well, a brain in their head would be a good start, and that’s true. And I do know that regardless of your background, if you are if you are inquisitive, intelligent and hard working, you can learn all this stuff. It’s not saying it’s not difficult, but if you’re if you’re invested in it, look at me, choir director. You’re invested in it. You can learn.

[00:45:59.610] – Dana
And if you’re if you’re twenty two year old college graduate, you sure you’ve shown the initiative? Great. You probably will. To learn how to do the job as well. That being said, it was created so that. The industry could test. The knowledge of entry level technicians, the examinations that were created were designed for a college graduate or perhaps someone deeply invested in technical theater. Lacking college, but a desire to work within the industry, they could still do things.

[00:46:45.490] – Scott
So let’s let’s Segway from that into the work about the backstage exam.

[00:46:52.450] – Dana
Shirt with when I started working on ESET set, which was around twenty four, I immediately thought high school students could be business. And if that was the case, how could we hear those quotes? High school students. In twenty eight, I should say, twenty eighteen, is that been handed off to USITT because ESTA Foundation went away? And so ESTA USITT to shepherd, in which they’ve done a great job and. I had continued working with him.

[00:47:35.910] – Dana
I think I was the last man standing, so to speak, from those who had been with it in the early 2000s, and we’re still with it. Twenty eight point I assess the ESET committee. If I could if I could take a breath and try to create a high school, and that would be Volt. About a year and a half years ago, I was contacted by Educational Theater Association saying if if I would be interested in helping create an examination for technical theater.

[00:48:18.980] – Dana
And I said, well, there’s already one that kind of exists and that was back. It has not been finished, but it was well on the way. And so that’s when backstage basic and advanced basic. I can’t think what it stands for a. Basic and comprehensive knowledge, that’s the back of. The great thing about this was that Educational Theater Association USITT joining together made whole two organizations in the area of. Technicals there, especially at the secondary school level, USITT always had the knowledge of people to create such things, but we never had any reach into secondary schools yet are some high schools, but it’s a handful.

[00:49:25.460] – Dana
EDTA didn’t have the technical expertize to create something like this. But they had the high schools. And so that’s how that’s how backstage really got rolling and currently we are in we’re looking at questions and and they’re doing they’re doing the work on making sure there is there is as little bias in the test as they’re as they’re can be doing other things to major questions. We just did around with 13 SSME going through the test so that we can establish a cut score of we did a test in in this in the fall.

[00:50:08.310] – Dana
We had roughly twenty three hundred high school students across the country take the test. We did a post test this last spring going into summer. It closed in June on the 30th. And we had and we saw definitely saw an increase in scores. From an increase in scores complutense to post, which was a good thing, and we hope that this will not just be a test that teachers can utilize to as an end, of course, assessment, but can also provide curricular guidance on what they should be teaching, what we believe they should be teaching.

[00:50:48.200] – Scott
That’s great. That’s great for those going back a little bit down memory lane way back in 2005 and followed by twenty seven and twenty five, I was on a panel with the New York City Department of Education to create a blueprint for theater and theater arts K through 12 and what kids in those schools should be learning. And it was adopted by New York State or maybe was chartered by New York State and New York City took it over to create it. And then two years later, I was asked to put together a panel to bring together a bunch of industry experts to create an exam.

[00:51:23.120] – Scott
And one of my first calls was Daina because of his experience and breadth of knowledge. So we brought together a group of folks, including while a whole bunch of people. And and we created a test with an outfit called Nökkvi, which is an organization that creates these these multiple choice tests and put together a test for New York State. And so we’ve gained this knowledge with putting together these tests goes back quite a ways.

[00:51:55.430] – Dana
And it is interesting writing the test, because one of the things you discover is the stuff you don’t know. Right. I, I remember in 2007 I was invested in this and plus I was in New York by myself and I did not get. I try not to do things that I would have to explain to my wife. So there I sat it in club quarters down by Wall Street with nothing to do because downtown New York pretty much shuts down at 5:00.

[00:52:29.120] – Dana
And so there I am on my laptop typing out and I really thought was a great and Scott read it and said, that’s not what is. That’s all. Is it all there? Yes. I was getting a phone call. Yeah.

[00:52:53.180] – Scott
Sarah asks when they’ll be able to access the backstage exam this year or so that it’s still in pilot. There is a question right now as to whether we’re going to make it available. This fall, or if we’re going to wait until spring is looking more like we’re going to we’re going to wait till spring and that the availability of taking the exam will probably go away until that time. That being said, access to all the support materials should still be there.

[00:53:26.990] – Scott
So that that Web address that Scott just posted a moment ago. OK. If you go to the USITT, OK, backstage. Just hang on.

[00:53:45.980] – Scott
Dana is a busy boy. Everybody wants his attention. So this this page that I have that I’ve sent the link to here that you can save and open another window has a lot of resources that study guides and that sort of thing. And you’ll find a lot of information there. And as things are announced, I’m sure that we will come back and talk more and more about technical theater. And the backstage is Van. But there’s a great, great link to follow another link that I wanted to share with everyone since we talked about student chapters, here is a page to the USITT student chapters.

[00:54:30.870] – Scott
Let’s do that one. There we go, there’s the link to student chapters. And that has all sorts of information on how to start a student chapter and so on.

[00:54:46.700] – Dana
Oh, I see. I’m just I’m looking at something that Sarah Collins put up there and she says sometimes she’s learning how to use her ionic. Yeah, it’s a fun board. If you weren’t aware. ETCP offers beginning intermediate and advanced training on the iron. It’s really for all of the iOS boards, and I think it’s 15 bucks and it really is good training. And what I did was because I didn’t have access to a board, I downloaded I downloaded the virtual board from their website and would do all the exercises on that with and using the computer simultaneously.

[00:55:38.750] – Scott
Yeah, that’s a great idea, and there are other programs that are available to teachers for free, like there are visualizations, programs and such that it takes a little bit of putting together. But you can use the board to run a virtual state set of lights on your computer vector works and vision is is available to educators. And there are some other visualization software packages that are available to educators as well. And you can hook it up with a DMX dongle, which you can get awfully cheap so that it’s a whole set of things that we can put together.

[00:56:11.180] – Scott
And at some point, if you have the desire for more knowledge in these areas, drop me an email, because I’m always looking for topics to cover and things to to curate for you all. What then you have. Let’s see. I wanted to put this. I had asked you a question, let me just put this in the chart on how people can contact you should they want to get involved with the set. OK, and there’s Danas email page, email address so you can contact them directly.

[00:56:46.990] – Dana
They’re. If you would if you would like to be involved with backstage exam as we create new tests, the next test up that we’re going to add to the. Backtrack. We have roughly four hundred and eight questions and a question back, we are getting ready to add questions for stage management because that is not currently covered in the test. It would be impossible to cover everything. So we’ve got to start somewhere, and much like the knock to exam knock, the exam doesn’t have anything in there about it, doesn’t have anything about rigging.

[00:57:25.810] – Scott
I think it has it. I think I remember there might have been a couple of basic counterweights questions, OK, how do you balance something? Did have something on stage management because it asks about how to type at a stage that we had decided the stage manager management would be the next next thing up. Also, lest I forget. Christie had said something to put it, put in chat that you want to get involved with USITT more locally, there are regional chapters that your students can become involved with.

[00:58:02.930] – Scott
And some of those some of those regions like Chicago area typically have quite a few sessions that go on during the year. And that’s the Midwest section, which I believe, Kristie, is an officer.

[00:58:17.640] – Scott
Here is Christie’s comment, and this is true, there are chapters around the country, some are more active than others, but it’s certainly if you go on to the USITT site and you look for regional sections, you will find it. Let’s see if I can grab it here.

[00:58:36.850] – Dana
Well, Scott’s finding that, again, if you are interested in being becoming involved with backstage, send me an email. Folks, to be honest, it’s like any other. It’s like any other committee. You can have 15 people on on the working group, of which you see four consistently contributing.

[00:58:59.040] – Scott
This is this is very true.

[00:59:01.570] – Dana
It’s just the nature of committees.

[00:59:04.670] – Scott
Nancy, throw in a comment, which is very true, that Millsap’s subsists, he does have fly system inspections, and if you’re going to fly him out for a fly system inspection and this will count, this is almost for any rigging company if you’re going to bring them out for inspection or something, see if they offer 1/2″ a seminar for your people and they can tack it on and it saves all that travel from such.

[00:59:32.740] – Dana
And I know in Bill’s case, throughout the pandemic, he was doing three free webinars every Wednesday at 11 and there was a limitation on how many people could do. But Bill loves to teach.

[00:59:45.790] – Scott
He has them posted for free watching on his website.

[00:59:48.760] – Dana
Oh, that’s true.

[00:59:50.410] – Scott
And and he’s a great trainer. Delbar Hall is a fantastic Riggen trainer as well. Yeah. So he’s there’s a whole slew of them. There’s a slew of people out there that will do training and such.

[01:00:04.330] – Dana
There is a there’s a new company based in Bloomington, Indiana, Dulong Ringin Solutions, and there they are offering their offering online training. That the instruction manual.

[01:00:22.260] – Scott
Yeah, there’s a lot of that, I mean, I’ve been creating mine as well, so it’s just there’s a tremendous number of resources that are out there, Dana. It is two o’clock. Do you have any parting words?

[01:00:35.510] – Dana
Regardless of the level of training that you have, more training is always good. I think the biggest issue that we face as public school educators or educators at any at any level is is proving we know what we know. So much so much of the time, technical theater is performing tasks for which we have no formal training. Figure out ways that you can document your training. Yes. There is not there’s not a bachelor’s degree in counter weight reading, but you can take seminars, you can read books.

[01:01:12.330] – Dana
You can you honestly, you could take the ESET rigging examination. Take the backstage stage, except for that matter. But to prove that you do know things that you put time in, that it is not nontraditional knowledge, but it is not it is not knowledge that everyone’s aching to know. And so you can’t find it at every university. But document safety starts with you. And if you don’t really know how to use it, you don’t know.

[01:01:48.220] – Dana
And yeah, because that’s what’s the biggest issue. We don’t want to look them in front of our kids. We fake it until we can make it. But that’s not all. And just because you can and just because you can push the genitals around with someone at point and you know, doesn’t mean you should do. That’s so true. And I will say, if you really have an urge to take an over 30 songs, one, I know a guy might take a monkey and Lanky and Lamees hospitality class.

[01:02:24.960] – Scott
How is it?

[01:02:26.490] – Dana
It’s good. It is not straight on. Tomorrow’s the last or this Thursday is the last Thursday I did the Occitan through the local union hall.

[01:02:39.500] – Dana
Yeah, I did my mine in Louisville. It was. It was enjoyable.

[01:02:45.500] – Scott
Well, we have not touched on so many things, like how you’re part of the local and you do pick up work and stuff like that. We will have you back again. We’re going to jump out of this session now because it is just after 2:00. Once I end the session for people that are still with us, it will dump you back in the lounge. If you want to take a seat at one of the tables, I’m going to hang out for the 15 minutes or so we can have a face to face chat.

[01:03:14.810] – Scott
It’s similar to a resume call. And thank you so much, everyone. Thank you, Dana, for joining us. And this terrific day, everybody.

[01:03:26.320] – Dana
Thank you.