It would probably be simplest to ask what my job doesn’t involve!

I’ve worked mainly in production management over the last seven years. If you’re a production manager you’re mostly focused on one specific show, which you get to know really well. Then as Head of Production you’re doing all that but with multiple shows at once. But as a technical manager you’re working with the theatre, really.

Originally, I was a City & Guilds electrician. I did an apprenticeship to learn the ropes and for four years, that was my job. I think what you learn as an apprentice is pretty unbeatable, really – even if you’re doing the best qualifications on the world, it can’t compare to what you learn when you’re actually doing the job.

In my mid-twenties, I went and spoke to a careers officer. They asked me lots of questions about the sort of work I liked doing, where I enjoyed working and so on. In the end they recommended two possible career paths: working as an aircraft engineer, or getting a job in the entertainment industry. I didn’t really fancy the first one, so they put me in touch with a gentleman who had a TV production company. He recommended I do a (very good!) course on technical theatre at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland).

The best tip I could offer anyone would be to go to a small theatre where you can do a lot. Too many people get seduced by the bright lights and the big shows, but you learn so much more in smaller theatres. Before I got onto the uni course, I helped out at with amateur dramatics at a local council-run community theatre – when I got onto the course, they offered me a part-time job, so it all worked out well. When I graduated I became technical manager at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh. During the Festival we had 12 shows a day, and I was completely out of my depth! But I learned very quickly, and I learned a lot. In a bigger theatre I would have been in a much smaller role and I wouldn’t have learned half as much.

I once had to make an 8-metre tall Trojan horse. As a production manager you work with scale models of the sets and scenery for each production. These models are provided by the set designer and are 25 times smaller than the real scenery you build for the stage. During one show I was measuring a scale model of a horse which I had to build, the scale model horse was covered with balsa wood to make it look old and wooden – part of the covering fell off while I was measuring it, revealing ‘Registered Trademark: Barbie’. When I got home, my dad asked me what I’d been doing that day. I told him I’d been building an eight-metre tall Barbie horse. You make the weirdest things in theatre.

Theatre is so much more exciting than TV and film. Originally, I thought I wanted to go into TV and film, and I actually got offered a job in TV four years ago, which I turned down. Theatre’s just so much more varied and there’s a real thrill to it – you get one chance to get it right in the final performance – there’s so much adrenaline. Every day is different, and no two productionsare ever quite the same!

If you're interested in applying for one of the National Theatre's two Technical Theatre apprenticeships email them here.

More info:

Technical Manager job description.