STEM students peek behind curtain at technical theater camp – WCF Courier

Those behind-the-scenes roles can be surprisingly technical and complex, seventh- through ninth-grade STEM students learned this week at the Science and Engineering in Technical Theatre camp. About 40 middle schoolers participated in SETT, a collaborative project between the Gallagher Bluedorn Performing Arts Center and the University of Northern Iowa Department of Theatre.

Most theater camps focus on building acting and improvisational skills and stage production. This week-long camp is the first-of-its-kind opportunity in the Cedar Valley for hands-on experience on the technical side of theater, said Jennifer Onuigbo, GBPAC community relations manager.

The majority of participants were from Cedar Falls and Waterloo schools with additional students from surrounding communities.

“The purpose is to expose students to careers in technical theater and relate those to STEM concepts through lighting, sound, scenic design and costumes,” she said. Students rotated through those four sections, working with theater professionals and UNI student volunteers. On the third day, participants chose specific areas for a “deep dive into areas that interested them most,” Onuigbo explained.

“We hope if students have this experience they can see other career possibilities in theater and, if that doesn’t happen, when they see a stage show or movie in the future they’ll have a deeper understanding of how it all works.”

“It’s an incredibly important opportunity,” said Katy McGlaughlin, Theatre UNI’s production manager. “So many times we think all middle and high school students want to be acting on stage, but that’s not true. There is science and technology and you need it all in theater.”

She’s directing the camp curriculum for middle schoolers as well as the camp for high school students, which runs Monday to Friday next week.

“People don’t think about the technical jobs in theater, and that skills like math and engineering are valuable in theater. As a STEM camp, we’re helping kids make those connections, open their horizons and learn to be creative in different ways. These are transferrable skills,” McGlaughlin said.

An exercise in the sound workshop taught by Robert Scott and Chris Tuzicka, for example, had students replicating the sound of a “Star Wars” blaster by banging a wrench against a tension wire. They also mimicked the sound of a lightsaber using an old projector, similar to how the special sound effect was made for the hit movies.

Keelin O’Brien of Cedar Falls and Shyla Tovar-Goecken of Waterloo worked together to practice the unobtrusive placement of cardioid microphones like those actors wear on stage.

“I was interested in playing with the microphones and in how sound is made. I’ve always liked theater, but I haven’t been in a play, so this is a way for me to learn more about it,” said O’Brien, who attends Holmes Junior High School.

Tovar-Goecken, a student at Hoover Middle School in Waterloo, wanted to learn more about “sound waves and sound beds and what goes on behind the scene,” she said. Both students think the skills they’ve learned will come in handy, especially if they join a tech crew on school productions.

In scenic design, theater faculty and designer member Mark Parrott instructed students in measuring accurately to create a scale model of a stage scene. Students also learned the fly rail system of flying in scenery on stage. Students in lighting design took apart stage lights and lighting plugs and put them back together again, along with learning to hang lights on rails and attach power cords.

UNI costume experts Katrina Sandvik and Amy Rohrberg emphasized the importance of character, color and textures – all part of costuming – to convey narrative on stage. Fawn Slaughter, a Holmes student, hopes to become a cartoonist and took his deeper dive into costume design. “I wanted to learn more about creating personalities and designing characters for my stories,” he explained.

On Friday, students presented a showcase for family members that illustrated what they had learned in camp, which included an audio project and costume creations displayed on dress forms.