Student Blog: Sky’s The Limit… Unfortunately

Gravity has always had a personal vendetta against me, as evident by my height. I’ve always preferred keeping my feet on the ground. Roller coasters, airplanes, elevators, even downward escalators, definitely not my Best Friend.

What an interesting fear to have as a lighting designer!

When I started college, I had sort of focused a light before. I watched some tutorials, read some user manuals, got on the ladder, and tried my best. My only experience with focusing was me at 2am in my local community theater guessing where the light should go. 

Keep in mind, the ladder and I are not friends. Every step I took up the ladder, I felt the rungs shake, the ladder shift, and saw what I thought was a never-ending drop below me. 

In reality, that ladder was not high at all. 

I started taking class in the light shop this semester. I was thrilled to finally be working on my concentration when I had been in the scene shop and costume shop last semester. 

When I saw Hercules on West End over the winter break, I felt entranced by how tall the pillars felt to me. I was thinking, Wow, I'd hate to be the person who had to LED tape all of that...

Well, one rainy Friday, I got put on the grid team. 

Purposefully, I had never looked down in light shop. Why would I? I hadn’t really been reaching out over anything yet, just swapping lamps and changing lenses. 

I started going up the stairs into the grid, with a bright red helmet squeezed onto my head. Before me is a small area to crawl through to get into the grid. Not a big deal for me, I’m short anyways so no strain on my back. 

Once I’m through that area, I can fully stand up. The area is tight to fit in, but not unbearable. I started walking through the grid, occasionally ducking to not hit my head, and finally I got towards the area we’re working on. I go to sit down, and then I look down.

That was a mistake.

And here’s where I realized, the grid is see through. Which, that’s obvious to me now, but my excitement and my anxiety always overcome my logic. Through the grid, I see what feels like miles below me. 

It goes down, down, down, and down some more, and even more after that.

…Okay, realistically it’s probably thirty feet. Maybe fourty if we’re being dramatic. But in my mind? That’s at least four zip codes down, two time zones over, and a definite head injury.

I froze.

I wish I could tell you I, very delicately and purposefully, sat down with ease to calm my nerves. When you picture this, do not imagine a graceful pause, or a thoughtful moment of reflection.  I did the very professional maneuver known as stop, drop, and question all of my life choices .

 One second I was walking, the next I was glued to the grid like a startled cat that had accidentally climbed a tree and suddenly realized it had no exit strategy.

My brain began doing math it had never attempted before.

If I fall… how many bones will I break? Would the helmet actually help or is it just there so people can identify my body? I wish I had picked a prettier helmet color for this moment.
Is this how people become sound designers? Because they refuse to go up here again? 

Why did I pick this career? 

Meanwhile, all my other classmates are on the grid is just… working. Like nothing is wrong. As if we’re not suspended above the stage on what is essentially industrial chicken wire.

Not to mention, there are people below us. If I drop something, I’ll hit them, and it will be my fault. Logically, my wrench was tethered to me, and everyone had helmets on below me, but my logic stopped working when I left Earth’s stratosphere. 

One of my classmates walks by me and says,

“Hey, can you scoot a little so I can get across from you?”

Scoot.

Scoot?

M’am, I am currently managing a business deal with gravity itself. Scooting is not on my calander.

But I did eventually. Very stiffly and very slowly. The kind of scoot where your body moves two inches but your soul travels six feet in the opposite direction. The kind of fear I felt in my soul when my mom tricked me into riding Mount Everest at Animal Kingdom (not cool mom). 

Eventually I made it over to the spot on the grid we were working at. We were moving a pipe from the gantry up to the grid level. Guess what this task involved? 

Leaning.

Forward.

Over the abyss.

By this point, my brain had already opened a PowerPoint titled “All The Ways This Could Go Horribly Wrong.”

Slide 1: Falling
Slide 2: Falling but with dramatic music.
Slide 3: Falling in slow motion

But by this point, I had gotten too far to come down. I already got halfway across the grid. Quitting now would be silly. 

So I inched forward.

I grabbed the pipe with one hand, leaning over the railing to grab the pipe with the other, and ended up being just able to reach it.

At that moment I discovered something fascinating: when you’re terrified of heights, your survival instincts activate in very strange ways. 

And then before I knew it, I tightened the cheesebourough onto it and everything was fine. 

When I leaned back onto the grid, I realized two things.

First, I still had a pulse. Always a positive. 

Second… I had actually done it.

Am I cured of my fear?

Absolutely not.

I still avoid looking down. I still move across the grid like a cautious raccoon trying to avoid being caught in daylight. And ladders and I are still in a complicated relationship.

But, I climb up there anyway.

The funny thing about theater is that the magic everyone sees from their seats usually comes from someone doing something a little uncomfortable behind the scenes.  And if the price of theater magic is making peace with gravity every now and then, well… I guess I’ll keep bringing my hard hat up into the sky. 

So even though my brain still insists that the grid is approximately four zip codes above the Earth, I go up anyway. Not because I suddenly love heights, but because I love what happens when the lights come on—the moment the stage glows, the actors find their marks, and a room full of people forgets the real world for a while. To make the physical world go away, I have to be willing to push it out of existence. In a strange way, that’s my job: to climb into the most real, most physical parts of the theater—the ladders, the pipes, the metal grids—and quietly build the illusion that makes them disappear. 

So I’ll keep climbing, even if my legs shake a little on the way up. Because somewhere below, an audience is waiting for the lights to come on, and for just a moment, believe in something that isn’t really there, but is just as valuable to them as the physical world.