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Day 1 in Kansas City was spent walking around the city and finding out where eating was a possibility. Day 2 in Kansas City was the opening day for the USITT convention. After registering we waited for about an hour for the Stage Expo to open. Once I got into the Stage Expo I was truly a little overwhelmed by the amount of new technology available to see. I spent most of my time in the Stage Expo finding out where all of the different displays were, and deciding where I would like to revisit as well as what companies I would like to talk to about what they are doing in the theatrical world.

I went to my first seminar today at 1:30, which was an extremely interesting discussion on the ideas of Immersive Design. This seminar discussed the importance of embracing technology and the wants of people from their entertainment. The panelists stressed how our generation is seeking entertainment that is interactive and creates an alternate reality that they can dive into; in order to work within these ideals of 5D and immersive design, technology plays an extremely important role. This seminar opened up ideas for job opportunities that theatrical designers may fit into, but may have not thought of because it is found within different fields.

At 5:00 I went to a seminar about The Art of Sound for Dance. I found this seminar very informative about how to answer many questions that I often over hear with in the world of dance. I was completely opened up to the ideas of using theatrical sound fxs to create sound for dance as well as the concept that Cunnigham and Cage use in their collaboration on dance shows of the sound and the dance being separate entities that when put together create a new and “magical” experience, as stated by Darron West. I also enjoyed Brad Berridge’s solution to making the monitors loud enough on the stage for the dancers without ruining the sound in the audience; his philosophy suggests starting levels on the stage and then working your way into the audience. Overall I am learning an extensive amount of information at USITT Kansas City.

The first day at USITT was amazing. The day started off with cheering as we rushed off to grab free bags. I was very interested in a new type of color scroller, which uses magenta, cyan, and yellow gel to mix color. The reason I was interested was the gels had holes in them that ranged from quarter sized holes to pin pricks in order to let light through as the color mixed. They work so much better than scroll through 10 different solid color gels.
I continued to walk the floor and received many free trinkets from IATSE, Apollo, and everything else I could get my hands on. The salesmen operating the booths were both informative and friendly and helped make every conversation interesting. I especially enjoyed working with three girls that ranged from graduate students to seniors. Together we had an hour to design lights, scenic elements and costumes for the play Gluttony for ‘Emerge Prague’. Collaborating with the girls was easy and they were very nice and valued my input. We were proud of our finished product and Collin even said he would put up our picture of us posing in front of our display on the Emerge website!
The day ended with a seminar on Lighting control. The speakers showed a PowerPoint of lighting boards from the past to the present. It was fun to hear the rivalry between the CEO of ETC and the creator of Strand. It was really interesting to hear questions from the audience. One man asked if the companies have ever researched color printing since it involves mixing of color, which has been around long before it was incorporated into the theatre world. I cant wait for tomorrow!

Hello Kansas City! My fellow UB Theatre & Dance students and I arrived yesterday afternoon and spent the evening exploring the city around the hotel.

Today the USITT Conference began. I registered and picked up my tag at 9:30 am then went and got coffee at the local market with some friends. At 11 am the Stage Expo Floor opened and it was a mass conflagration to reach the escalator to the floor in order to snatch all the free swag.

I spent much of the morning before my first session exploring the Stage Expo Floor. I met a man in a bunny suit and had my picture taken with him. Following this I made my way to the area of the floor that housed many booths looking for students interested in internships. Among my favorites were Cirque de Soleil, The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, and Disney. Sadly, Disney was not the one that wanted me. Disney said that they prefer taking on interns who are only focused in one area and nothing else. So unlike UB, versatility does not matter. Then I started talking to Steve from The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey. I found the experience very rewarding and ended up giving him my resume and filling out an application for their internship. Later, I returned for a meeting and interview with him. It went really well and I hope something positive comes of it.

Following this I also went to two sessions. “Wanna Rock’n’Roll All Night” was a session that encompassed life on the road as a techie and a designer. It covered important details from hiring an accountant to what to know about your W-2 or 1099.

The second session I went to was “100 Years of Color in Stage Lighting.” Although this session was not what I thought it would be, I found it very interesting. The history of Rosco, a gel company goes back to the early 1900’s. The company began as a lamp dip company, coloring giant bulbs that were in streetlamps on the marquee. From there their industry as gel makers sky rocketed as WW1 began. Interestingly enough, types of gel that are no longer used within the entertainment industry are still produced and used for medical and light therapy research.

Overall today was a very exciting first day at USITT. I believe the entire week promises to be interesting and exciting. Soon enough you shall hear from me again.

Roger, Roger Breaker Nine… Over and Out!

Our trip started yesterday with two airplane rides and a thirty-minute bus ride to our hotel in Kansas City. We spent the evening exploring the new and beautiful city on the river, before getting some sleep for the busy day to come.
Today was the opening day of the fiftieth annual USITT National Conference; there was a lot of excitement in the air this morning as thousands of theatre technicians and students awaited the grand opening of the stage expo floor. Once the ribbon was cut the mad rush to the elevators up to the floor and the ensuing rush to the Syracuse Scenery and Stage Lighting booth for free velour handbags. After the initial rush was over I began to seriously explore some of the booths on the floor. I spoke to PJ Turpin of Morpheus Lights about a new form of color scroller that instead of using different saturation in the three gel strings, it had increasingly smaller holes in the strings to allow more white light through.
After a few hours on the floor it was time to go to my first session of the day, “Rock and Roll All Night” which turned out to be less of a session about the mechanics or design of concert lighting, and more of story time about the life on the road. While these stories were entertaining and humorous, they proved not very informative about someone interested in learning about concert lighting.
My next session of the day was called “Evolution or Immaculate Conception, the History of Lighting Control”. This was far more informative and interesting of a session compared to the first one, although they did not talk much about current control systems as they spent too much time talking about the older history of lighting control. We heard from the CEO and Product developer of Electronic Theatre Controls, as well as the creator and head programmer for Strand Lighting Company. The session focused on the first ever memory and two scene preset boards which the owner of Strand had built himself out of pinball machines in 1967.
The rest of the day was just dinner, blogging and making plans for the far busier tomorrow, which will begin at 8am with the Upstate New York Regional Section Meeting.

This morning we arrived at the USITT convention center at 9am bright eyed and bushy tailed. We registered and received our badges and then departed for 10 minutes to the local supermarket where we picked up breakfast. I ate a burrito that was only okay. It was sausage, egg, and salsa. After we were satiated we headed back to the convention center where we waited for two hours for the trade floor to open. It was quite banal. The trade floor opened and streamers flew and all of our hearts soared as we bum rushed the Syracuse Scenery and Stage Lighting for a bag made out of velour – which is also used for drapery on stage.
After our initial pushing and grabbing, we browsed the expo floor for about two and a half hours at which point the people from the Disney costume internship told me that my resume was very well formatted, but to reapply next year as I was too young to take said internship. Kerri Leonard and I then took a picture with a giant bunny. Then we began an application process at Cirque du Soleil, which is for the most part fruitless as there are over 5000 people on the list for the internship.
Then we walked over to a booth for the Shakespeare Company of New Jersey where we received water-soluble tattoos and were scheduled for interviews almost immediately. My interview is tomorrow at 2:45pm. Wish me luck internet.
Then I went to my first session ever at 1:30pm. It was a session about ventilating hair. The name is quite deceiving. Ventilating hair is actually the process by which wigs are created. To create a wig it takes a professional over 80 hours. It is incredibly tedious and the technique is almost exactly the same as crocheting, but at different scales. You loop the fake hair and put a very tiny hook through a net (where the wig is attached to) and pull it through. Then you twist your hook and tie it back, and repeat, thousands of times.
After this I took a nap.
I woke up and went to the costume commission, which has been occurring since the very first USITT in 1960. The management was changing over, and I decided to consider a wig symposium over the summer. We also received an awesome website with thousands of images of different period costumes to use as reference images during design.
Then we went to a restaurant and had some of the worst service ever.
Now I’m blogging.
Peace kids.