As Wilbur the pig pranced around on the stage, I swung my dangling feet back and forth above the ground and looked around the dark theater. I looked at the ladder built into the set; I looked at the squirming kids across from me. I looked everywhere except at the scene going on below, when I noticed some dim light coming from higher up the wall. I turned and squinted, and saw three high school students wearing headsets. They looked so big and important! I watched them for a few minutes, until Fern's yelling pulled my short attention span back to the play.

At the end of the show, the lights came up, and we were ushered away in the direction of our buses. I snuck another look at the people in what I would later learn to be the control booth. A boy waved at me. I smiled shyly and followed my class out.
It was the children's show in the Black Box Theatre - Charlotte's Web that year - and I was a third grader. In what felt like only five seconds later, I was a freshman in high school, facing a crew sign-up sheet on the call board. The children's show? I could be one of those kids up there! I didn't waste any time in writing my name down.

Soon after, the official crew was selected and the list was posted - I was assigned the job of sound board operator for The Brothers Grimm Spectaculathon. It was my first taste of TEC. I met and learned from younger members and upperclassmen alike, and I played back all of the show's sound cues without problems. Once I started, I wasn't going to stop. I worked Zenith, then joined the leadership team, then the Chaparral Stadium Video Crew and worked every PAC production my sophomore year. I was hooked.

Fast-forward to junior year, where I found myself back in the Black Box as the stage manager for Willy Wonka. This show was the longest running in TEC's history, with a total of nine shows, had the largest cast of any Black Box Theater show with almost 40 cast members, and even brought in several elementary students from across the district. For a lack of a better description, it was a big production!

To top it all off, we had a smaller-than-usual crew. However, everyone rose to the challenge and was on top of their jobs, taking notes to help them improve and constantly teaching each other. One TEC member who wasn’t originally on the crew stepped up at the last minute to fill the position of a student who got sick, emulating the camaraderie and leadership outlined in the mission statement by being there when needed and doing what others might not be willing to do. Together, we put on nine great shows, each one better than the last.

Honestly, I was a little nervous to stage manage - what if I messed up the whole show? But during the three rehearsals before opening night, and in the days of the shows after, I asked questions, I took notes, and I remembered the examples set by all the stage managers before me - the same things I had done on all of the shows I'd worked no matter what position I was in. Then, when opening night came, all I could do was my best and trust in the crew.

One of the most important lessons I learned from this experience was that part of being a leader is knowing when to step back and be a follower. With all of the different elements that make up a show, it's impossible for one person to do everything. Specialization makes every part of the show the best that it can possibly be instead of having many people’s focus and knowledge spread too thinly over everything. For the scene changes this show, the stagehands figured out what worked best for them and wrote their own notes instead of me micro managing them from the control booth. Because they were constantly moving the set, they were able to troubleshoot and make changes much better than I would be able to make. Being the stage manager doesn't mean being the person that is in charge of everything. It means being the person that calls the cues. Everything else is being a leader, which everyone on a crew has the potential to be. Everyone can offer encouragement, propose solutions to a problem, follow rules and safety protocol, and embody professionalism, teamwork, camaraderie, and fun. By acknowledging that everybody on the crew is a leader - no matter the magnitude or number of their responsibilities - no one is above anybody else. Every job is equally important. The members of a crew learn from each other and work together, not on different levels based on perceived rank. This dynamic leads to successful productions and contributed to the improvement and eventual accomplishment of this show.

​After the conclusion of the ninth curtain call and the final call of the last light cue, I stood up from my stack of textbooks (I was too short to see the stage without them) and happily started discussing how well the show went with the light and sound board operators - my coworkers, and friends - while watching all of the kids exit the theater. Some were chattering excitedly; some were waiting patiently, still and quiet. A few were staring intently up at us.
So I waved. 

       On our final day in Italy, we finally arrived at our long-awaited destination, La
Scala Opera House. We were given a tour of both the museum and the opera house.
Within the museum, we observed countless artifacts that were owned by some of the
attendees and composers from La Scala's prime. Those objects were indeed
magnificent, but after visiting a myriad of museums all week, the opera house itself was
far more fascinating. La Scala had been recently renovated and all of their equipment
was state-of-the-art. The entire stage could not only be rotated, but also completely
replaced by a different stage hidden below. This feature was absolutely incredible and I
had never seen anything like it. However, one of my favorite features was La
Scala's "tech tables." In TEC, we use a few black tables for rehearsals that we normally
have to pull out of storage. La Scala's tech tables, however, rose up from a hidden
panel in the ground. I was amazed to see a nearly identical version and setup of the
tables, something our organization uses quite frequently, actually being used in the
professional setting.
        While in Italy, our group of TEC students and chaperones had many planned and
unplanned adventures. Something about this trip changed our group. Perhaps it was
the hours of bus rides to and from different cities or the countless tours of museums.
Regardless, this trip helped build new friendships, strengthened old ones, and lived up
to the TEC mission statement. Leadership allowed us to get there. Camaraderie made it
meaningful. And we certainly did have a lot of fun.

If you were to ask me about my most memorable moment in TEC, I would describe my experience heading up audio for the 2013 musical, The Music Man. In a job that required a considerable amount of focus for the entirety of the performance, one would think that the stress of managing 43 miked actors, a 12 piece orchestra, and numerous sound effect cues might have knocked this particular experience out of the runnings.  Interestingly, I felt that this challenge not only encouraged a growth in my technical knowledge but instilled vastly greater self-confidence in me as the production advanced.

  The Music Man represented a monumental step for me in the areas of said self-confidence and more importantly self-esteem that I will never forget. Going into that first tech rehearsal, I feared that I would not be able to continue the tradition of excellent sound quality and consistency during the musical.  What my crew and I quickly realized was that with constant focus, attention to detail, and most importantly, a passion for our jobs, success was inevitable. It highlighted one of the most important things I have ever learned about TEC, and made it easy to see why it is such a popular club. It’s common knowledge to even the newest TEC members how easy it is to fall in love with this organization and its associated culture and  group of friends. Stepping back as a now older member, it’s amazing to see the immediate effect on 9th graders working their first productions as they quickly assimilate into the TEC community.

In short, through the Music Man I found that success begets success. Success leads to a passion for one's work creating such a personal commitment and investment into a job that an immense quality of work is put out. Mr. Poole and members of TEC who came long before me noticed this as well, and worked hard to ingrain it into the TEC culture. They found that the easiest way to get younger members truly dedicated was to enable them to be valuable and successful components of the productions. Each crew member is always put into a position in which they can succeed, and are allowed to grow into their respective positions until it isn't the staff member or crew head pushing them to do better work, but themselves, for the sake of the production, and for the sake of the other TEC members on the crew. It’s what keeps the younger members coming back, and in this particular case it’s what made this year’s audio team so successful. It goes without saying that a significant amount of time goes into training and coaching for all positions by staff members and crew heads alike, so that every person on the crew can experience the feeling of ownership, pride, and sincere respect for the outcome of the show.

I joined this organization for the high-tech aspects of our theater but like many, I stayed for greatly different reasons. For the graduating seniors of TEC there is so much more to them in the people, the relationships, and the marks they leave behind on members like me or you. Passing on the tips and tricks that the seniors have picked up over the 4 years of high school doesn't come as burdensome for them. They do not desire success for themselves, but success for  the future and continuing members of TEC who will never stop raising this organization to greater heights, by promoting leadership, camaraderie, and fun.

Nutcracker Stage Management
            Ask any TEC alum from the Westlake High School Technical Entertainment Crew if their experience in this organization had a positive on them. Universally, the answer would be yes. From stage managing to running a follow spot, from audio mixing to grip, the experience that students receive from TEC is unique, regardless of position on shows.  Since I was a sophomore working my first major production (The Nutcracker) I have absorbed all of the benefits that TEC has to offer. I have grown personally during each and every production that I have worked. Whether my position was being a crew head, on a crew, or just helping during the builds I have always noticed a positive influence on my skills as a leader, friend and mentor, along with the many others around me. Having put so much hard work into this organization, I was rewarded with quite the peculiar position. A position I would never have thought I would achieve. I was put in charge of stage managing the 2012 Nutcracker Spectacular.
Upon first glance it looks like the stage manager's only job is to call the cues of the show and coordinate the members of the running crew to put on an amazing production. In reality it is a much more involved position on both a personal and technical level. It is a position that involves charisma, focus, and patience. All of these aspects collide creating a characteristic of every great stage manager-- a leader. A leader who bears the responsibility of the mistakes during a show, the responsibility of motivating and inspiring the crew, tired and exhausted after a week of rehearsals and late nights, and above all, the responsibility to rise to the occasion and make it all happen. Leadership is the life-blood of our organization.
TEC manages to bring out the traits and skills in people never believed to be strongly. In my Nutcracker experience as stage manager I looked at a show that I would have to shape, a crew that I would have to lead and get working together in such a tight fashion that to anyone else it may look like we had been working together for years, and put it all together in less than a week. I feel that as a stage manager I did my job, keeping the show and crew together despite the long hours of hard work and sleep deprivation we all felt. I learned what I could accomplish during this Nutcracker and I am so happy to be passing the torch to the next stage manager who will lead a different crew into a new Nutcracker next year.
Going back to that original statement, if you asked any person who was lucky to go through TEC if it made a positive difference on their lives, I can say without a doubt that this experience in stage managing has affected me, changed me, made me better because of it. I could say the same thing for all of the people that were on the crew for the 2012 Nutcracker Spectacular. In light of all this, the feeling of success, the feeling of growth, and the feeling of leadership, TEC is still a mystical thing to me in some ways. It's easy to see how it affects people, but it still leaves me dumbfounded that it is all possible at a high school level. I can't begin to imagine how much the program will grow in the years to come and how future stage managers will rise to the occasion and leave their footprint in the sandbox of productions that we put on as a team. I do know, however, that no matter how the shows change, in either complexity or size,  TEC will always create members who will take ownership of them and adapt to any new challenges that are thrown at them.
​At the end of the day this is how I see TEC, I see a community that makes leaders. I am proud to have learned from leaders before me, to be a leader, to have taught lessons to some of the younger students, and to now be able to sit back and watch a whole new wave of leaders arise to the challenges of the world. The real world is not always a friendly place. Values that should matter don't always come through in society, but I know for sure that TEC will be putting not only leaders, but good and genuine people into our society that really do make the world a better place to live in. That is what really matters, that is why TEC is special, and that is why I wanted to be a stage manager-- I wanted to lead and become a better person because of it. 

In any high school it's hard to find serious students, but to find students that will end up doing jobs and completing tasks on a professional level is even harder. I think that the relationships made in TEC are the only reason we are successful and full capable of creating magic year after year in each and every one of our major productions.

Every year, TEC loses some of its most valuable assets, the seniors of the crew. The seniors of TEC, the leaders, the ones who knew it all, and the friends that leave every year stay in our memories forever. Most times, you never end up seeing these role models again, and in some cases they are even some of the most influential people in our lives. What keeps this organization afloat, however, is the fact that every year we gain new members, excited to get involved and ready to learn. 

"Moving on is simple. It's what we leave behind that's hard."