Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2010 - 47

,
an

educAtiOn
Education Commission members present their research in a "poster session" at the 2003 USITT
Conference & Stage Expo in Minneapolis.

divine what is important about how we did things in the past and work to
incorporate those lessons in our plan for teaching with today's technology. in these situations and others, young designers and technicians are
called upon to think less and less about the end product. they may know
more than i about web-site creation, HtMl coding, and vectorWorks 3d
modeling, but the content behind all the technology is often less engaging. We as theatre artisans need to encourage the next generation to put
in the time and effort to really understand the subject matter of whatever
they are working on, and commit to supporting those ideas. turning on
fifty lights in a fancy way, just because you have the technology to do so,
is rarely as effective as turning on the right five or ten lights when an appropriate artistic choice has been made.
the other major influence that technology has exerted concerns
the explosion of job types in our industry. Much concern was registered

early on that things like moving lights and computer control of lights,
sound, scenery, and projections would take away vast numbers of jobs.
on the contrary, the maintenance of all this technology has created quite
a number of new job titles and categories. thirty years ago, there wasn't
a Moving light Programmer, a Moving light technician, an automation
technician, a Wireless Mic "Wrangler," and many other positions. this
means that there are quite a number of new educational avenues for students to pursue. Many of the largest shows now also rely on structural engineers for the development of massive scenic elements and complicated
fly systems. this also means additional classes need to be offered, there
is more equipment to buy for your school, and potentially more staff and
faculty are required to teach these new areas. even now, very few colleges
have independent theatre sound degrees, and even less have anything
related to projections and multi-media content design. Many of my col-

1964

USITT's second
mailing address:
Box 866, Radio City
Station, New York,
NY 10019

1962

2nd Annual USITT
Conference, New York City.

1961

USITT's first
mailing address: Box 291,
Catherdral Station, New
York 25, NY.

1962

President Kennedy
sent a short letter to USITT
saluting the celebration of
World Theatre Day.

1963

President John F. Kennedy
assassinated in Dallas, TX,
November 22.

1961 VELCRO, a "separable fastening device" receives U.S. patent.
1963

3rd Annual USITT Conference, New York City.

1963-1965 Joel E. Rubin
USITT President.

1961

First U.S. manned space
flight, May 5, by Alan Shepard

1963

Opening day, May 7, of the original
Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. All
USITT members were mailed free
season programs.

W I N T E R

2010

theatre

design

teChnology

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2010