A Journey To Technical Theatre

by Stephen Wei


My relationship with technical theatre started when I first started teaching at my current school. There was a loose stage crew, but mostly there were no protocols, no structure, and no organization to it. The teacher who ran the crew for the school was no longer interested, so as a budding new teacher, I stepped up. 


Over time the crew became something that was respected and valued by the school at large. The quality of the tech improved as I created more and more structure for it. After a time, I was asked to turn crew into a course so that our technical students had somewhere to be. I refused to make running other people’s shows part of the course, and instead built a program that fed directly into our drama production course. As the teacher of our drama production course, I needed kids to know how to do things before we could start and I decided the grade 10 course would teach those things.


So I taught students to draft a set to scale so that they could plan the sets once they joined the production course. I taught students to create a lighting plot so I would have a lighting designer once they got to grade 11. I taught stage management so that students would already know how to write blocking and technical cues for our mainstage and theatre festival. 

I know in many schools, stage crew courses are holding places for students so that they can be ready to set up for assemblies or do tech for various shows. For me, that wasn’t good enough. I wanted the technical theatre course to be for the technical theatre students, not to be employed by other people’s shows. By providing a pathway from the technical theatre course into the drama production course, students weren’t working on someone else’s shows; they were working on their own.  While stage crew still exists (and many of the drama production students worked on stage crew), they had two courses dedicated to them, that were about them. It gave them ownership in a profound way that also made them feel important.

The culture around technical theatre at the school has grown dramatically, to the point that we now run two full sections of technical theatre every year and often have more students applying for theatre production programs than acting in post-secondary. All this stemmed  from creating a space for students who are interested in technical theatre.


Not all schools are able to run a technical theatre course for a variety of reasons, however, providing the learning in an extracurricular setting is always possible. I recognize the extra time often put on teachers, but once the first generation of technicians is trained, training upcoming students becomes easier and easier. Children thrive in structure, and having very clear protocols and processes creates predictability. Furthermore, the hierarchical structure, starting with a stage manage,r helps those on crew to pass on the learning to each other. 



The Ministry of Education recently announced a new requirement for graduation from high school: a course in technological education, Grade 9 or 10. What will this look like? I hope our offerings extend beyond the agenda of producing workers for the construction and real estate development sector. Let’s also value technology in the arts and create legitimate pathways to arts-based careers. Furthermore, we must not lose sight of the inherent value of learning in the arts and technical theatre as exploration, community, experience and expression for all students, whatever life paths and passions they pursue.


I interviewed three of students who took my technical theatre class and are on stage crew. They are  currently in our drama production course working in tech:


They benefited greatly from having had a tech space held for them because it allowed to focus on their particular area of interest. This giving of space also gained them respect from peers. They are seen as leaders and a fundamental part of the tapestry of our school.