Making Theater Work

March 3, 2016

Christina Hogan '09

Christina Hogan ’09 has always loved a good story.

But performing in high school plays didn’t fire her passion. It was as a theater arts major at Saint Mary’s where Hogan discovered a world behind the stage. To her surprise, it kept her squarely in the storyline.

“I hadn’t thought much about the technical side of things—about design or stage management—until I got to college,” the theater major said. “I loved the idea of collaborative storytelling, surrounding myself with all types of talented people to pull a production together.”

She’s been doing just that since graduation, working most recently as an assistant stage manager with American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Hogan, who recently joined Actors’ Equity, a union representing actors and stage managers, also did stints at the California Shakespeare Theater and the Magic Theatre, also in San Francisco.

“I joke that I feel like a hall monitor,” she said. “Sometimes it’s a matter of running down actors and making sure they’re where they’re supposed to be.”

But the job is far more than that.

“I’m helping the actors to make the story happen,” Hogan said. “I’ll hand off props or give cues. I’m right alongside them the whole time. Sometimes I’m helping with costume changes. Or I’m literally turning on a flashlight so an actor can get on stage easily and safely.”

Hogan works on a freelance basis, but as in many a good story, the journey outweighs the destination. Her starting place, however, is always the same.

“I just love storytelling,” she said.

Adam Tantillo '14

Like many a technical director, Adam Tantillo ’14 wears the toils of his work on his hands.

“They have really thick calluses and they’re all messed up,” he said with a laugh. “There’s a ton of heavy lifting, and a lot of fine construction as well.”

Now attending the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, Calif., Tantillo is in the first year of a three-year MFA program in technical direction. An art form all its own, technical direction includes building stage pieces from drawings and models. The CalArts program is one of a few of its kind in the nation.

Tantillo is getting ready to embark on one of his most ambitious creations to date: a 1,600-square-foot Plexiglas stage that will be raised over the main stage with motors. Actors will traverse the platform for a CalArts production of Tor Age Bringsvaerd’s “The Glass Mountain.”

As part of his coursework, Tantillo studies structural, mechanical, and materials engineering. Creating the stage, he said, “is all math.”

Tantillo’s chosen career came about largely by happenstance. He initially planned to become an orthopedic surgeon. Circumstances intervened.

“I needed a job when I started at Saint Mary’s, and I didn’t want to sit behind a desk,” he recalled. “The theater department was hiring somebody to build their sets and I applied. I really enjoyed it, so I decided to major in it.

“The satisfaction for me is having no idea how to make something work, and then breaking down a problem into small pieces and figuring out a solution. I just love learning, and I’m learning a ton of different things all of the time.”

Shannon Gaughf  ’12

A recent graduate of the Yale School of Drama’s M.F.A. program in stage management, Shannon Gaughf  ’12 is on her way to New York.

There, she will remount a production of playwright Danai Gurira’s “Eclipsed” before it moves to Broadway. Gaughf will serve as production assistant, an entry-level stage management role in the bright lights of New York. Last summer, she was assistant stage manager at the venerable Berkshire Theatre Festival in Massachusetts.

Besides guarding against—and remedying—wardrobe and prop malfunctions, the role, Gaughf said, is akin to being a stage mother.

“You get to know these actors so personally,” added Gaughf, the first Saint Mary’s student to earn the newly created undergraduate degree in technical theater and design. “You know what makes them happy and what they don’t like. When you do seven or eight performances a week, you know what works and what doesn’t. I’m a problem-solver in so many ways.”

Growing up in Monterey, Gaughf loved theater but was too shy to act. She dabbled in stage management in high school, but got her deepest exposure to the craft at Saint Mary’s, when Michael Cook, now-retired technical director at the College, needed a stage manager and made an entreaty to Gaughf to fill the role. She accepted.

“I think they were crazy,” Gaughf said with a laugh. “I had no idea what I was doing.”

But she’s come to love life behind the curtain.

“Honestly, sometimes it’s even more fascinating than what’s happening on stage,” said Gaughf, a technical theater and design major at SMC. “It’s such a collaboration. The director of the actors may get all of the credit, but no one can do it alone.”

Linda Baumgardner ’05

Linda Baumgardner ’05’s artistic sensibilities have returned to their roots. After earning a performing arts degree (with an emphasis in theater) at Saint Mary’s—and an M.F.A. at CalArts—she came back to Moraga in 2008 to influence a new generation of Gaels. Baumgardner now is adjunct associate professor of performing arts and director of the design and production portion of the College’s M.F.A. in Dance program.

In those roles, she teaches theater design and production, as well as lighting design. Her students have gone on to work for Bay Area theater companies.

Baumgardner has seen her protégés lock on to careers they might not have known existed.

“For me, the satisfaction is in working with the students and seeing them find something that they’re passionate about,” Baumgardner said. “A lot of people who want to go into the arts, especially when they’re in high school or younger, think that they want to be on stage.

“When they find out what it’s like to work backstage and how to bring things together in a way that technical theater does, it can be really satisfying. It’s about helping students find something they didn’t realize they were intrigued by, and show them how to follow that path.”

When she arrived at Saint Mary’s as a student, Baumgardner was determined to act. Instead, she ended up working backstage at all but one performance. In graduate school, Baumgardner completed an internship at the Joffrey Ballet, where she worked backstage helping to manage productions.

“I enjoyed being the glue that helped hold it all together,” she said. “And you didn’t have to deal with the stage fright.”