Technical Director Ross Rundell is back with another installment of his blog series, On the Road With Ross! Follow along for monthly updates of an insider’s look at the production rental world of Glimmerglass. To read his previous blog posts, click here.
Hi y’all. This month, I thought I’d take a moment to tell you about a slightly different On the Road experience. In addition to leaving beautiful upstate New York for rentals, we also travel for recruiting ahead of our summer season.
One of our biggest recruiting trips is to the USITT (United States Institute for Theatre Technology) Annual Conference. Held in Columbus, Ohio this year, the conference brings together collegiate and professional technicians, educators, and stage technology vendors. Over the course of the week-long conference, there are seminars offering learning opportunities, as well as an expo floor, where vendors can show off new gear, and companies and schools set up booths highlighting their institutions. Immediately after loading out Rinaldo in Detroit (which went very well), I flew to Chicago to meet up with other Glimmerglass company members to set up our booth. Pictured above, I was joined by Abby Rodd (Director of Production), Joel Morain (A/V Coordinator), Christian Shaefer (Operations Manager), and Wyatt Nyman (Production Manager). Our hiring season started in January but we still had a few spots open, and lucky for us, USITT has a lot of students looking for work in the summers. I found three great additions to our Stage Operations team! My fellow staff members also conducted interviews during the conference to fill open positions.
One of the opportunities USITT gives us is to build excitement for the season. We are also able to speak to prospective hires about what they can work on in the next year to increase their chances of being hired. When you are bringing in roughly 340 seasonal employees every summer, getting people hyped for future years is a major win. Plus, with a combined 60-plus years of experience on our USITT team this year, it’s not like we have a shortage of things to say about Glimmerglass!
Attending USITT is a great experience, and it allows The Glimmerglass Festival to be a part of the larger technical theater community. It’s also a great chance for us to get to reconnect with alumni of our program, and see what they are up to. It’s not all business all the time: one evening a group of Glimmerglass company members
(including myself) won first prize at the USITT trivia competition!
Until next time.
