Out with the old and in with the new. Where the clientele of the ABTT Theatre Show used to vie with each other for the greyest beards and the largest beer bellies, this year the trade show was populated by slim young things, an increasing percentage female, in the ubiquitous cargo trousers of varying lengths, revealing midriffs, possibly with studs in their navels, and tops most noticeable for their practical non-existence.
Some things, though, don’t change. Whatever you wear as a technician, it seems, has to have to largest number of pockets legally allowable on an item of clothing - preferably filled with useful or useful-looking gadgets purchased from Flint’s ever popular stand or won in one of the numerous competitions around the three halls.
And of course for techies, black is always the new black and de rigueur at all times, and worn - whatever the item (shorts anyone?) - with Doc Martens (steel toe-capped, natch, though where to find them in Size 3 is another question).
But I’m being unfair to other style classics - a moderate scattering of large bunches of keys on belts combined with revolting T-shirts of the ‘Genesis World Tour’ (suitably washed out to prove one’s credentials) and ‘Flymen do it in the air’ variety still remain on display every year.
But the corporate T-shirt, of which every self-respecting technician will have a wardrobe full at home, is definitely in the ascendancy as an item to wear in public, not just when working on the event related to the company’s name featured on it.
And then there’s the people actually running the huge number of stands now crowding the three halls. A lot of them have become grown-up businessmen in proper suits, some of them will forever remain former technicians who have jumped to industry for a more steady lifestyle and better money (but still look like they’ve been on the road for the last six months and have the ponytail and stubble to prove it) and there’s the occasional family business of middle-aged husband and wife who have found, to their surprise, that what they sell is of interest to the theatre.
Many of the bigger stands, however, now hire staff for the trade show and they are often females of the Essex variety, some of them even scantily clad, or as in this year’s version, clad practically only in rigging harnesses.
I’m exaggerating, of course, but there was an air of change perceptible and Harry Venning’s view (above) of the 1989 technician and manager is now definitely history. It seems that theatre, just like any other business these days, is full of men and women of indefinite age, carrying black briefcases, of middling weight and dressed like businessmen and women.
The outrageous is confined to the ‘old’ techies or the misguided young (with the occasional notable exception) and most visitors and purchasers looked practically indistinguishable from the businessmen whose wares they were inspecting.
Good? Is technical theatre growing up? Bad? Are we losing the ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’ label on which we’ve been trading for so long?
And, more importantly, does that mean the art we put on stage has gone safe and middle ground, too?
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