But that doesn’t mean they don’t love demonstrating their skills.
Thursday, January 30, 2020
ITF Tech Challenge Champs
But that doesn’t mean they don’t love demonstrating their skills.
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But that doesn’t mean they don’t love demonstrating their skills.
3 comments:
I would have 100% jumped at the chance to be a part of this in high school, but looking back, from a (short) distance, the whole idea of grooming technicians for this competition specifically seems a little counterintuitive. It kind of reminds me of parents forcing their kids to do sports and vicariously living through them and getting super involved in the stands and toxically pushing their kid to do better. The tasks, however super useful, seem really specific, and really, no one’s going to hire your simple because you can tie a bowline two seconds faster than your competitor. Although specific skills are obviously a huge part of working in technical theatre, from my experience, it is more about your collaborative skills and your ability to work as a team that sets you apart. Also, the way the directors subversively were “grooming” the kids from middle school to be a part of this gives me an uneasy feeling. My director also took a lot of interest in shaping me into a talented technician & designer, and I always had to make sure that the decisions I was making about the path I would take in college were my decisions alone, and I feel like some of that agency gets lost at that young of an age.
When I went to nationals last year I thought about asking my troupe director to create a team from my high school but we ended up being selected to bring a show to the festival and we didn’t have the time to be apart of the challenge. It is pretty cool that troupes from Arkansas have won every year (good for them) the skills seem pretty basic but I’m guessing that the teamwork, precision, and time are the parts where Arkansas troupes excel. I do agree with Bridget that is is a little strange that they groom their technicians for this competition. I met the team that won during the showcase but I have never been able to watch the tech challenge and see that process. It is cool that the troupes were spotlight in this article and some of the quotes were really nice to read. I think my favorite addition from the thespians in Arkansas was “A highly skilled technician is fine, but if he’s terrible to everyone else as a person then that is one thing I can’t have,” I know personally that I have met some incredible technicians but some of them weren’t such amazing human beings… But theater is very much a collaborative process and you need to be able to work with people if you want to be able to create amazing things. Congrats to the Arkansas thespians and I maybe they will win again this summer.
As someone who got to participate in the tech challenge competition at the MIssouri Thespian Convention, Arkansas now scares me. In my experience, no team from Missouri was ever that dedicated to the art of tech challenge. My school I would say seemed to show a lot of enthusiasm for it, but that was mainly for the folding a drop event. I do wish that our group had put in a little more effort such as coming up with a team name and making shirts would have been amazing. Although we didn’t have a cool team name or cool t-shirts, but my junior year, we placed in every event of tech challenge, and my senior year got first with a state record for folding a drop and I believe we got third overall score. Tech challenge is mostly about timing and accuracy, but everything is also dependent on the facilities you are provided with. Senior year, one component was hanging and focusing a light, however, you HAD to wear gloves that made it hard to work in, the pipe set up was not tight so if you tried to move the light in the slightest everything was thrown off, and you could not bring your own wrench to use which made it very difficult. Overall, I enjoyed my experience with tech challenge even if we never made it to ITF.
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