A Look at Bethel’s Tech Teams

MISHAWAKA-- Every pro­duc­tion on Bethel’s stages in­volves a plethora of peo­ple work­ing hard be­hind the scenes to make sure every­thing runs smoothly. For chapel and the­atre, a por­tion of those peo­ple com­prise the tech teams. 

Bryan Jack­son, a ju­nior dou­ble ma­jor­ing in En­gi­neer­ing Man­age­ment and In­ter­cul­tural Stud­ies, works for the chapel tech team. 

“I do mostly the sound,” said Jack­son. “I’ve done vi­sual and graph­ics and stuff like that too, but usu­ally I just do the sound for chapel and for Ves­pers.” 

Jack­son has been in the sound booth since his fresh­man year; he said that the hard­est part is usu­ally mak­ing sure that every­thing is set and ready to go, but af­ter that it’s easy.  

“It’s just mak­ing sure that the stuff reaches and con­nects and every­thing,” said Jack­son. 

Jack­son loves watch­ing peo­ple’s re­sponses to the wor­ship ser­vices.  

“I en­joy... get­ting to do the job well and see­ing peo­ple re­spond to wor­ship in that way,” said Jack­son. 

If any­one is in­ter­ested in help­ing, Jack­son said they would be more than wel­come. 

“Just con­tact Stacy Bone,” said Jack­son, “and then we could start them off wher­ever they want, they could just click the Pow­er­Point slides if they wanted to start off with.” 

Macy Young, a ju­nior the­atre arts ma­jor, is on the tech team for the up­com­ing pro­duc­tion of “Three Sis­ters”; tech week for the pro­duc­tion be­gan Wednes­day night, Sept. 18. 

“Tech week is a re­ally hard week for a lot of peo­ple,” said Young. “We’re com­bin­ing a lot of el­e­ments that we’ve been talk­ing about for months… it’s a lot of com­bined ef­fort.” 

Young added that re­hearsals dur­ing tech week are much longer than nor­mal. 

“Usu­ally they run from six to mid­night on Thurs­day and Fri­day,” said Young, “and then Sat­ur­day some­times we’ll do a 10 of 12, which means we’re sched­uled for 12 hours but tech­ni­cally we only work 10 be­cause we have to take union breaks.” 

Young also talked about some of the many re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the tech team. 

“The tech team is nor­mally in charge of light­ing and sound,” said Young. “You can also be a painter, which is what I usu­ally do. Painters usu­ally work around every­one else, they fit into all the cracks of the sched­ule. So some­times I’ll paint from af­ter re­hearsal at 11:00 un­til 2:00 in the morn­ing.” 

If you are in­ter­ested in help­ing with the the­atre tech team, Young said to con­tact the chair of the the­atre de­part­ment, Don Hunter. 

Young con­cluded by en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to come and en­joy “Three Sis­ters.” 

“Come see the show,” said Young. 

“Three Sis­ters” will run from Sept. 26-28 in the Kelly Au­di­to­rium.