Unsung heroes, you gotta love them. And in this case, you better love them, because techs are among that brilliantly clever subset of humanity where: if you cross them, they can get you. And you will never, ever be able to prove it was them. You gotta love that too, at least I do.
So, in honor of stage technicians, some theatre trivia.
They are often called "stage hands" and that is taken from "deck hands" as in sailors on ships. Why? Because the first ones were. They were the folks used to hanging and using the kind of rigging that maneuvers the set pieces. That's why the theatre is rife with sea terminology, practices, and even superstitions.
My favorite of these is playwright. The word is playwright, not playwrite. As in boatwright. Boat-maker. The writer of a play is called the play-maker. It's not that there is anything wrong with the word "write" or in being a writer. But I like that the word for the story creator for at least one medium conveys the weight and mass involved in crafting a story. A story is a made thing. It's constructed: there's study, planning, and technique involved. It's not just "oh giggle giggle, I like XYZ so much. Here is a drabble of X & Y in a Taco Bell drivethru."
Which brings me back to the techs. These guys embody the spirit of collaborative arts. They don't pretend to be writers or actors. They know they didn't write the thing. As a class, they are the least deluded and least pretentious people I have ever met in the arts. But they have an absolute grasp of what they do and how it contributes to the whole - how the organism of a live performance is healthier when their job is done right, and how it suffers if it's wrong.
How can you not love that? So, your mission if you choose to accept it: should you ever meet a stage tech, buy him a drink.
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