nwLaborPress: It’s Jan. 31, and Gburek’s rigging crew is setting up for KISS: End of the Road World Tour. That means unloading 27 semi trucks and hanging 170,000 pounds from the top of the arena. At sign-in, crew members greet each other with hugs and handshakes. Gburek explains the day’s set-up. “Up-riggers” then take an elevator to the arena’s eighth floor, a floor thats’s off-limits to the public, and use a catwalk to access steel beams 105’ above the floor below.
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Every time we talk about IATSE crews in class, people talk about their inner workings like it a mystery, which is why I decided to read this article. IATSE crew work feels like the ultimate run crew assignment. I can totally see why working in this union would be so appealing if you love the load-in portion of the technical theatre process. I think it is so cool how well coordinated IATSE crews are – being able to turn one room into a entertainment venue is mere hours is pretty mind boggling. I have really no idea what I want to do after college with my career, and reading testimonies like this always make me wonder if maybe this is a part of theatre I would like to be a part of. I love rigging and the load in/run crew process of a performance, but I have heard that the union is vastly male dominated, and this article sort of confirmed that for me. Everyone in these pictures are male, and Gburek’s tone towards sexual harassment policies seemed a little off putting (as in they were a part of the business structure that makes the touring world not fun like it does in the movies). I would be interested in hearing about the experience of a female rigger.
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