Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2020 - 32

The cast of Actors Theatre of Louisville's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, 2018, directed by Meredith
McDonough. Media Design by Philip Allgeier. | Photo by Jonathan Roberts, courtesy of Actors Theatre of Louisville.

ATL's journey to the creation of the
media technologist's role was not wholly
untraditional. Like many similar theatres in the nation, as the role of media
technology in live production began to
increase, ATL's sound department acquired the responsibility of installing and
running projectors. Media technology's
addition to the sound department workload came more out of necessity and a
determination of which staff had any experience with projectors, as opposed to
a strategic plan about the future of the
technology's development.
Over the course of several seasons
in the early 2000s, Jason Czaja, ATL's
audio supervisor, had the most familiarity and passion for projectors and found

himself doing that in an almost full-time
capacity. In the 2006-2007 season, Czaja
moved out of his role as the audio supervisor at ATL into the newly created media technologist position, which added
in some supportive responsibilities for
the theatre's IT systems in addition to its
work with media and projectors.
Allgeier assumed the media technologist role in 2008 and acknowledges
that "the position now is different from
its original intent. It is more than just
the technology now." All of the IT duties
transitioned to the theatre's full-time systems manager. Under Allgeier, the media
technologist role is more design-focused;
his background in video editing fills important functions in the creation and

32 | THEATRE DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY | WINTER 2020

editing of videos for several administrative departments.
"I can't say that anyone had a clear
grasp of how my department should
work when I took the position." Allgeier
adds. "I consider myself very lucky to still
be surrounded by supportive people."
It is also worth noting that the position has a certain degree of built-in
flexibility, depending on the media design needs of a given season. During
the 2018-2019 season, ATL had media
design components in all but one of the
first seven shows of its season, including The Curious Incident of the Dog
in the Night-time, A Doll's House Part
2, Pipeline, Hershey Felder as Irving
Berlin, and the holiday remount productions of Fifth Third Bank's Dracula and
A Christmas Carol.
In terms of the organizational chart,
the media technologist's role is treated
similarly to the departmental managers of any other production department
(technical director, costume director,
etc.). The media technologist sits in on
department managers meetings, reports
to the production manager, and is categorized by the organization as a member
of the production staff in the playbill.
Upon closer and more practical examination, however, it becomes clear
that Allgeier is right to think of the media technologist as a "Lone Ranger" of
sorts. When Allgeier installs projections
systems, he relies on the support of the
lighting or sound departments to help
hang projectors, but much of his work is
done independently.
Also, of all the production department staff, the media technologist is perhaps the single production staff member
most likely to spend their time focused
on work that is not directly tied to the
mainstage season through their commitments to a multitude of departments, primarily marketing.
When working as a designer on a
show, the media technologist reports to
the production manager, but he simultaneously is working for the director on
the project and the artistic director in a
creative capacity, and these complexities can be challenging. In a field often
categorized by silos and where various
departments can be isolated from each
other, the media technologist can become a great connector, with Allgeier
seeing and often recording what ATL

Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2020

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