According to the Department of Labor and Industries, everyone should have a certified tech theatre teacher (with a CTE endorsement on their teaching certificate – not just someone who is ‘knowledgable’, as Amber mentions about her department’s music teacher – which is the norm I’m afraid). No minor should be performing the activities that we all have them do in the theatre without being in a bona fide vocational program. But, as several people have already commented, it’s more common for the Drama teacher to wear all of the hats – the majority of people in my online course in high school theatre management are in that boat. For this reason, I also want to keep the conversation going about this issue, like Dan. You’re quite right, a high school theatre manager needs to have a combination of knowledge about three aspects: tech theatre, management and education. And, it’s not only important to talk about these issues between ourselves, but also to make our admins aware of what goes on ‘behind the scenes’.
One of the problems - besides the legalities of a Drama teacher who is not CTE certified allowing students to run a fly system, be up in the catwalks, build sets and costumes, etc – is that it is unreasonable to expect one person to do all the work of teaching performance, teaching tech theatre, and in many cases, running your theatre as a ‘roadhouse’. Even if you don’t rent out to outside events, your theatre is essentially a ‘roadhouse’ if you host the school play, musical, choir concerts, band/orchestra concerts, the school variety show, parent meetings, student meetings and classes, the list goes on. Someone – a separate someone – needs to be managing all that (scheduling, paper work, production meetings, etc). And, while that manager must have a tech theatre background in order to make the decisions they need to make, as Jason mentioned that manager person is not the same as the technicians who are working the events and mentoring the students in each aspect of tech theatre – and realistically can’t be the same person who is a CTE certificated teacher teaching tech theatre to the students and providing the design and building for the Drama department’s plays.
Staffing is a huge issue in many high school theatres in this country, and it’s very frustrating when several times a month another e-mail comes into your inbox saying there’s an opening for yet another sports specialty coach (lately it’s been the pole vault coach, the running coach, the jumping coach, the throwing coach – all earning a $3000 stipend for their few weeks of work with a few select students). What about the lighting coach, the set building coach, the costume design coach, the sound coach, the construction coach….? Amy talks about a “team”, and that is what we, collectively, need to be aiming for. In my book – see my signature line below – I present an “ideal” staffing model for a high school theatre. One person doing it all not only causes stress and burn out for that one person, but safety and vocational education are jeopardized.
Roxy, I see you are located in Colorado. Do you know about CATTE (.org – Colorado Alliance of Technical Theatre Educators)? If you aren’t already a member, I would urge you to contact them. One of the ‘Gold Standard Schools” that I feature on my website (http://www.presett.org/gold-standard-schools.html) is actually a CATTE member in the Boulder area. You can also find out about the Colorado CTE Standards at https://www.cde.state.co.us/contentareas/careerandtechnicaled.
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Beth Rand
Author of "High School Theatre Operations"
High School Theatre Management Coach - next HS Theatre Management Training course starts March 27
PRESETT, a service of RCDTheatreOps
www.PRESETT.orgWoodinville, WA
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Original Message:
Sent: 02-22-2017 10:38
From: Roxy Pignanelli
Subject: Tech Theatre Teacher
How many of you have a technical theatre teacher in your faculty? Someone who strictly teaches all the tech production aspects. Thanks