This is the 116th article in Bears Doing Big Things, a weekly column celebrating the stories of notable M-A alumni.
“Talking to people, being generous with your time and energy, and doing what you can to help other people achieve their goals, is not only super fun and rewarding, it also makes your job easier, and it’ll make them want to help you in return,” Elissa Webb ’13 said. Webb works as a sound and lighting technician for theater and festival productions.
At M-A, Webb participated in various aspects of theater. “The PAC opened my freshman year, and I immediately got involved in theater. I did all of the plays and musicals while I was at M-A. I think officially, I was either on the costume crew or I was doing rigging for them,” she said. “I also did loads of sound and light stuff for band concerts and outside groups that came in.”
“I’d seen Bye Bye Birdie in the new gym, and then to have to go from performing in a classroom to performing in a professional-level facility that the school and city spent like $30 million on. For a lot of the people who experienced the transition, it was kind of bonkers for them,” Webb said. “I think that really set me up for a lot of what I now do, because the equipment that was in the PAC at the time was brand-new, very good stuff. I’m still using a lot of the same stuff now. I got to start on the industry-standard, which was really fantastic.”
Webb was also a member of the robotics team at M-A. “A lot of us did both theater stuff and robotics. So it’s sort of bouncing back and forth between the robotics classroom and then all the way in the back of the PAC all the time,” she said.
Webb particularly enjoyed taking Physics with Jeff DeCurtins during her junior year. “We did this thing called ‘Sense of Wonder,’ where we had to bring in a photo that made us feel a sense of wonder. That really stuck with me as a way to approach life and my current work. Just looking at things, being interested in them, and trying to figure out why they are the way they are,” she said.
After graduating, Webb attended Connecticut College (Conn), where she double-majored in theater and physics. She finished the full freshman year physics sequence, but halfway through the year, Webb discovered that the computer science department offered a robotics class. She decided to switch and sign up for Intro to Computer Science. “This is the subject that I have been looking for—technical, interesting, problem-solving. Physics was too theoretical for me,” Webb said.
While at Conn, Webb threw herself into student theater, getting involved in every production she could. “I worked with the Student Activities Council when bands and DJs came through, and I did the setup for them. I worked on the theater productions that the theater department put on. I was working for the theater department as a technician, and taking classes,” she said. “That was a huge part of my college experience.”
Webb was also a member of the Asian Student Association at Conn. “My mom is Chinese American, so I’m half Chinese. I was interested in meeting people who are similar to me or learning more about my culture,” she said. “One of the key things is that they put on a major dance show, and needed technicians for it, and a technical director. So that was a big part of what I did for them as well.”
“I think the assumption at Conn is that you’re there to learn and try things and that they’re not going to try to pigeonhole you into any particular degree. I was doing so much theater and computer science at the same time, which I find, especially in the UK, people get very surprised that I have that sort of disparate interests, and that I was able to pursue them both academically,” Webb said. “I really appreciate Conn for giving me the platform to try things, take classes in whatever subject I was interested in, both as a technician, theater artist, and then as a computer scientist.”
After Webb’s freshman year in college, she visited her aunt in Edinburgh, Scotland. “We happened to be there during August, which is when the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is on. It was like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. There’s something like 30,000 shows that get performed over the course of a month. I went to three or four shows, and I just loved it. I thought it was so wonderful. In my heart, I really wanted to go back to the city,” she said.
During her sophomore and junior years, Webb decided to study abroad at the University of Edinburgh. “They have a very good computer science program here. I could go and study computer science at a good university, and then also just be in the city and try it out,” she said. “I did a lot of student theater while I was here. I actually ended up failing one of my classes on study abroad because I just was not spending enough time on it.”
“Because I’d done so much student theater, people who were putting stuff on at the Fringe said, ‘Hey, do you want to come back in August?’” she said.
Webb finished her study abroad and then moved back to California to work at the Portola Valley Theater Conservatory over the summer. She then returned to Edinburgh and worked as a technician at the Edinburgh Fringe. “I made so many friends whom I’m still friends with today. I think doing that study abroad, and then the Fringe, meant that when I moved back after university, I had a lot of friends. I was able to come to the city and not feel like I had moved across an ocean,” she said.
After graduating from Conn, Webb prioritized moving back to Edinburgh over following a specific career path. She was accepted to the Royal Bank of Scotland Graduate Development Program, where she rotated through three different positions within the Business Technology Graduate Program. After two years in the program, she worked with the Application Support Team and then moved to technology strategy for commercial and investment banking. “There was a really wide variety of stuff that I was doing, and I was really interested in that,” she said.
“If I stay in the UK for five years on a Skilled Worker visa, then I’ll get permanent residency. So I had that timeline in my head the whole time, and when I got citizenship, I thought it was time for me to try doing theater as my job,” Webb said.
Webb left her banking job and started working at the Edinburgh Fringe at a venue called Summerhall as a swing technician. Most technicians are assigned to a single theater, but as a swing technician, Webb covered various technical departments such as stage, lighting, and sound. “I also just worked loads of special events. People would come and see a showcase about all of the shows that had come from Luxembourg that year, or all of the shows from the Hollywood Fringe, and I would help them out with a showcase performance,” she explained.
Webb also spent time in Melbourne, Australia, with her sister, where she worked with various Australian festivals, including the Sydney Festival, Adelaide Fringe, Melbourne International Comedy Festival, and the RISING Festival. Currently, she continues to cycle between festivals in Edinburgh and Australia. “Now I’m back in Edinburgh freelancing for a little while, and then I’ll head back to Adelaide Fringe in February. I’m really just going around and around the world right now, which is super fun,” she said.
“Being a part of a community is something that is so enjoyable about the many parts of life. The theater community and the fringe community are a fantastic one,” Webb said. “There’s a lot of things that are really fun and exciting about what I’m doing right now, but there’s a total lack of stability.”
At the festivals, Webb often works nine to 10 shows a day. The performances can range from stand-up comedians requiring only basic lighting to elaborate performances with audience participation, where she manages the lighting and sound. “It’s a super interesting job. It’s quite stressful at times, but it’s so cool to be able to have a performer and artist come in and to achieve their artistic vision,” she said. “What I like most about it is the problem-solving aspect—no production is ever the same as another production you’ve done.”
“What I prefer is being a swing technician and not necessarily being in any one room, but people calling when they need an extra person to help with something if something’s broken or mentoring junior technicians through problems that they haven’t encountered before,” Webb said. “At some level, you kind of have to go into management, so I’m not sure how much more there is in being a festival technician for me. If I go back to certain festivals, then I’m more likely to be taken out as a production coordinator, but the problem is, the more you do that, the less you get to actually be in the theaters and working with people directly.”
Webb’s advice to current M-A students: “Try things. You’ve got so many opportunities for extracurriculars, interesting classes, and teachers who want to help you at M-A. Just try them out, see what you like, see what you don’t like, and you’ll learn something from everything you do, even if what you learn is that you don’t want to do it again.”
To those interested in theater production: “Do as much of it as you can. Theater tech, at least in the UK, is one of the only industries in which you don’t need a qualification in the field to be excellent at it. You just need to do a ton of shows and just keep working.”
