Theatre skills students step into the spotlight

STUDENTS in a technical services course delivered through a partnership of Arts Centre Melbourne and City of Greater Bendigo in association with the Victorian Association of Performing Arts Centres, VAPAC, graduated from a technical skills course for theatre at The Capital on Tuesday 20 June.

Twelve students from Regional Victoria undertook the 12-week Tech Connect Regional Victorian Training program in either Bendigo or Shepparton and received their certificates at the event, a program designed to combat a skills shortage in the industry.

Bendigo Venues and Events, BV&E, team leader of technical services Stuart McKellar took a mental health component of the training to broaden his skillset.

“As a leader in the industry, I’ve actually been supporting this since well before it started, and as chair of the VAPAC organisation and the tech managers side I’ve always been looking out for training and we need to bring the skills up and we get a lot of green people coming through,” he said.

“Just to broaden my skills and you always can learn something new, you might have done it before but do it again and learn another bit of it.”

Mr McKellar said BV&E are always looking for more technical specialists.

“For us as a regional venue, getting skilled staff is really hard, but having this sort of training and being able to offer the opportunity for them to get those skills…allows us then to train staff within our organisation so we’re not so struggling to get the trained and experienced crew along,” he said.

Arts Centre Melbourne senior manager of technical training and development Murray Johnstone it had been a “12-week hit-and-run” for all involved.

“It is hard work, and it’s hard work for the participants to get through that amount of training and assessment in that time and carry that on and really put that into use in the venues afterwards as well,” he said.

Arts Centre Melbourne manager of technical training and development Walter Ponce said undertaking the trainings were some of the “most rewarding” work he’s done in his entire career.

“This is very much our bread and butter for the [Arts Centre Melbourne] RTO and it’s really encouraging and great to get to this point in time in which we get to see people operating and smiling and having a good time and enjoying what it is that we do,” said Mr Ponce.

“I’ve been putting a lot of emphasis into the fact that we’re human beings, we’re not machines, we have creative endeavours and we also like to do technical stuff.”

This was the first time the course was held in Bendigo, and the third year of its running.