Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2010 - 65

MAnAgeMent
i see many names of management commission members in usitt's leadership ranks-members of the board of directors, vice presidents, and
committee chairs. amazing how the time has flashed by as i recall their
expressing interest in joining the Management commission not to many
years ago.funny how time presses on.

in 92 the conference committee and i turned our attention to the
new Products showcase. With some imagination and the help of the student stage managers, the seattle committee and i turned it back into a
show-and in 1996 dick durst and i took the stage together for the first
time and nPs was back on the radar. in Wichita, rick stephens and the
ut austin contingent joined us for the first of several years of mentoring
along with travis decastro (attending his first conference?) and the late
cindy Poulson. i believe Wichita was the first time i expended dollars to
bring in professionals as there were not as many local contacts to draw
upon as there had been in seattle and boston.
after nashville it was time to turn the reins of the project over to
another leader and by our 1996 conference in austin, tX the transition
was made to James birder. He gave the project its own style and i believe
coined the phrase sMMP. along the way, with the help of chris Kaiser, leon
brauner, dick durst and others we were able to formalize the project, get
into a regular application process. We encouraged the professional stage
managers to begin contributing to the new century fund to support programs such as these each year. following birder was rick cunningham
and Jack feivou. from my point of view their biggest contribution was the
development of the private roundtables and more one-on-one time with
students and their professional mentors.
now we begin a new era with cameron Jackson. leadership in usitt
basically gives back what you put into it. if usitt was not the leader-intraining opportunity for theatrical professionals and volunteers, this nationally recognized program would not exist.

Elynmarie Kazle Zimmerman writes:
as a young professional and new board member of usitt in 1990, i was
eager to see what i could really do to make a major contribution to the
institute. after much thought, i wondered if there was a way to put stage
management training to work to improve our conference operations. My
initial idea was to pair student stage managers with professionals to manage the performance type events at conference to provide them with an
experience and improve the event. secondarily, i wanted to provide students with the educational opportunity to work as a team with other stage
managers and to provide an avenue for open dialogue with the pros. the
third part i envisioned was university affiliation; linking students in and
out of strong university programs to improve stage management training.
Project chairs were used for the mentorees and supported the students with professionals during the first year. steph Young was involved i
believe that first year and one of the students was fortunate to stage manage
the first (or one of the first) lighting demonstrations with Jennifer tipton.
other mentors included lori rosencrantz from american ballet theatre and
stephen brown from the Met. We also assisted that first year with banquet,
international reception, Keynote and new Products showcase.

1995

Publication in TD&T
(Spring issue) of "USITT
Costume Design &
Technology Commission Job
Descriptions Project."

1995

David Rodger, editor, and N. Deborah Hazlett,
art director, begin work on TD&T and Sightlines.
Richard Durst is guest editor of the Fall 1995 issue of
TD&T. The cover image of their first full issue (Winter
1996) is an illustration by Steve Nelson of riggers in fall
protection gear.

1995

Gabriel Berry, a costume designer in the
1995 U.S. Prague Quadrennial Exhibit, holds
her Silver Medal for Costumes. At right is one
of her sketches for Henry IV at the New York
Shakespeare Festival, 1991

1996

Rocky Paulson, coauthor of "Fall Protection
for Arena Shows"
(Winter issue of TD&T)
demonstrates fall protection
hardware at Stage Expo.

1995

35th Annual USITT
Conference & Stage Expo,
Las Vegas, NV.
W I N T E R

2010

theatre

design

teChnology

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2010