As the final song of Dance Troupe’s Spring Show, “Colors,” came to an end, senior technical director and stage manager Max Graham (12) signaled for the lights to dim and the curtains to close, May 30. Beneath the red flashing light of the theater tech booth, he smiled at the sound of resounding applause. He shut off the equipment and glanced at the door where his headshot was added beside those of past tech crew seniors. He closed the door behind him, leaving the tech booth for the final time after four years and more than 50 productions.
Graham entered Westview Theatre Company as an assistant tech manager in his freshman year, staying side-stage to communicate between the tech booth and performers and swiftly maneuvering sets between scenes. Since then, he’s taken up roles in lighting and set design. This year as senior technical director, he’s been involved in every event taking place in the theatre, including musicals, plays, dance shows, culture nights, and improv shows.
“If something is in the theater, it’s my responsibility to make sure that it happens,” Graham said. “I’m kind of omnipresent, like if something’s happening, I’m there. The dance show was my last thing, and now, after that, I’m done forever.”
Graham said he was encouraged by a friend to join Theatre Company as a freshman. By the second production that year, “Mamma Mia,” he said the faith that the upperclassmen crewheads and Theatre Company advisors had developed in him motivated him to pursue more involvement as a technician.
“For the second show of freshman year, I joined set crew, and the crew heads became two of my closest friends by the end of the next year,” Graham said. “They decided that they wanted me to start learning how to get into set leadership.”
By the end of his freshman year, Graham was crew head for the One Acts show. At the start of his sophomore year, he was designing his first-ever set for “The Three Musketeers.” Graham said the early jump to leadership roles was challenging.
“I was doing set design and I was the set crew head by myself, and I had not a clue in the world what I was doing,” he said. “I showed up to the first production meeting with this tiny little sketch on a piece of paper, and I was like, ‘that’s the design I’ve got,’ and they were like, ‘Oh no, that’s not how that works.’ I really just did not know how anything worked really, so I bit off a little bit more than I could chew.”
However, thanks to the friends Graham made and his consistent participation in almost every show, he quickly learned the ropes of leading and designing. Graham said his experience in a vast variety of productions, from the Dance Troupe biannual shows to Improv pieces to the Philippine Culture Night, taught him how important it is to be flexible.
“For some of the [events], it was just me in the booth,” he said. “Sometimes, I would have to do the projections, which is not my specialty at all, so I had to learn very quickly how to solve new issues with that and how to do it completely. It kind of forced me into learning more stuff that usually has [specialized crews].”
Now, as Graham is finishing his final year with Theatre Company, he said the years have gone by in a flash, especially since the world of theater continues year-round.
“It’s crazy now that I’m the senior because I look at the sophomores and I’m like, ‘wait, that was me; I had no idea what I was doing,” Graham said. “[Having a last show] is sad, sometimes it’s happy, like it’s really a mix, but it was just insane that this is the last time that I’m ever going to do that and it like kind of hasn’t really set in because my whole life in high school has just been show, then show, then show, always thinking about the next show. I haven’t really realized yet that I’m literally never going to do that again in my life, not with those people, and it’s just crazy.”
Despite sad goodbyes, Graham said he feels that his experience as a technician with Theatre Company, the student groups, and outside companies who rent out the theater has prepared him to take on future challenges.
“[Working with student and rental groups], I’ve had to learn how to be very professional because these [companies] are professionals, and it’s way different from just hanging out with a bunch of high-schoolers who are also there for fun,” he said. “I had to learn how the needs of other groups are so much different from one another.”
According to Graham, the real-life experience of working with companies and students has taught him what a book cannot.
“It’s good that we learned these kinds of skills early because these are skills that you need to have a job or be successful in college or an internship,” Graham said. “Some things you really only learn from doing, so I’m glad that we got to learn that [in Theatre Company], especially because oftentimes, things don’t go perfectly right the first time, so you learn over time. I’m glad we got the chance to experiment with that.”
Graham will start his first year at Pace University in September, majoring in Film & Screen Studies and Business to pursue a career in film production. He said that despite a bittersweet ending to the year, he feels prepared to take on whatever challenges come next.
“I’m satisfied with what I’ve learned and the friends I’ve made; I achieved exactly what I wanted to achieve,” Graham said. “Especially when I hear that people actually do like what I do [in Theatre Company], it makes it really easy to move on to college and anything beyond that because it gives me confidence that I can succeed in what I try to do.”
