My Tool Kit in the Theater

I started work at the Huntington theater yesterday, where I'll be working for a lot of this upcoming month. It is already a very different experience than my time at the American Rep: with a small scene shop located downtown, at the theater shared with Boston University students, the Hunt's shop is small and chaotic, but fairly efficient. They build for their own mainstage shows as well as various contracted works, and share the shop with students. We have started off the week by loading in Our Town at the black box space at Calderwood Pavilion.

A fully decked and roofed kitchen...to be seen briefly during the final scene of the show. Such is life in the theater.

One big change for me coming to work at the Hunt was a lack of available hand tools in the shop. Staff and overhire are told to bring their own tools in many places, especially IATSE (union) work calls, but other than the very basics (leatherman/multi tool, C wrench for electrics, gloves, tape measure) I haven't had the need to pack more of my tools. And I usually try not to, if a shop has the tools, because then mine will last longer and have less risk of disappearing. On calls for small shows, or say, when I helped my music teacher brother build sets for his elementary school's musical, I will haul my tools out of my car and use them more.

I know staff members at shops prefer their own tools often; and Tech Directors for smaller shops have their tools on hand often because they own more than the theater does, often, but I haven't been working in positions like that yet. (So this is possibly me moving up in the world? Or at least getting ready to!) I am more used to having my stage management kit (filled with anything one and one's actors could possibly need during rehearsal: pencils, sharpener, cough drops, tissues, first aid stuff, sticky notes, tape, etc...) wherever I go, so this is like a different version of that, I guess.

I have a pretty decent setup as far as tools go. For my sweet 16, my dad bought me a Ryobi battery-operated kit with a tiny circ saw, a drill, some bits. I've accumulated more, like hand screwdrivers and racheting screwdrivers, pliers, tape measure, random theater stuff like gobos and gel color booklets, and a little level, since then. Dad and I connect well over tools and mechanic stuff, so he usually gets me something fun for my birthday or Christmas, which is amazing :) Most recently, it was a head lamp, which is awesome for in the theater because no matter whether you are a carpenter or an electrician, the lights will go out at some point, or you will have to navigate and work behind scenery that blocks work lights, or crawl through some dark space to fix a connection or stabilize a platform leg. Painters often use them for the same reason; it's a steady, consistent light.

So tonight I pulled together my essentials to bring in tomorrow. I have a few tools that are red handled, so I gathered those and will keep the rest separate. I have phillips head and flat headed hand screwdrivers, a small level, a tape measure, a small hammer, a decent drill bit set, gloves, my leatherman and small maglite, a matte knife, and a few electrician's tools just in case: a multimeter, C wrench, and speed wrench. And my head lamp! I wish I could take my larger bit set in; it has drill bits, various screw head bits, a racheting wrench, and more...but the case is too large for my smaller tool bag and I don't want to deal with my larger bag with public transportation. My Ryobi drill is sadly outdated; it works well for home projects but wouldn't stand up to the Makita impact drivers a lot of shops have today, so I don't need to worry about bringing it in.

  Thanks for reading! Hopefully this wasn't too boring of a post...for many people I know this is standard stuff, but many of my readers also find day to day practices in this lifestyle quite different and interesting, so I figured I'd share something that is somewhat new for me.