BU’s Booth Theatre Helps Boston Public Schools Students and Grads Set the Stage for Success

Professional. Considerate. Focused. 

The 30 or so crew members working a video shoot for the dance group DrumatiX Boston University’s Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre wear headsets and determined expressions as they run lights and sound and deftly catch the props tossed offstage by the performers. 

“I’m down to 30 percent battery, should I switch?” “Should I zoom in tighter on the exchange?” “I’m sorry I raised my voice.” “Rolling!”

Not what you might expect from a bunch of high schoolers and recent grads at what amounts to a summer camp. But the students in the nonprofit Brighter Boston’s two-week summer training program at the Booth—the majority female and/or from underserved communities—have their eyes on what comes next: paid internships in the live entertainment and events industry through the coming school year, along with continued education and support. And beyond that, careers in the field.

“What’s so cool is, it can really be anything,” says Sophia Williams, a Boston Arts Academy student, as she looks around the Booth. “I mean, this could be clouds, or this could be jail or prison. You never know what it could be, because that’s just what theater is. It’s just transforming a place and people into something in your imagination.”

Brighter Boston was founded a decade ago by Boston Arts Academy technical theater teacher Dan Jentzen, an accomplished lighting designer, to prepare Boston Public Schools (BPS) students for internships and jobs in backstage tech with Boston theaters, concert halls, convention centers, and other venues. Jentzen teaches in the program and serves on the board.

In recent years Brighter Boston has added a parallel career program for recent BPS graduates not enrolled in a four-year college or university. “All of our career program cohort from this last year have gone directly to work after our program,” says Ann Sousa, Brighter Boston executive director.

Turns out, Boston needs skilled backstage workers.

“We have tremendous support from the industry,” Sousa says. “We have over 20 partners, including the Huntington Theatre Company, the American Repertory Theater, Fenway Park, the MGM Music Hall at Fenway, the House of Blues, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the New England Conservatory, the Institute for Contemporary Art, as well as a bunch of event production companies that do the big graduations and galas around the city. We are also supported by the entertainment unions.”

Now Brighter Boston also gets key support from the College of Fine Arts School of Theatre, which for the past few years has offered access to an ever-increasing share of the Booth’s state-of-the-art facilities, from the light and sound labs to the scene shop to the black box theater itself. Brighter Boston staff and mentors do the teaching, but Booth staffers are always around to solve a problem or suggest a better approach.

“It sort of evolved over time, because of the facility that we have, which is really neat to see,” says Johnny Kontogiannis (CFA’02,’23), School of Theatre production manager, who oversees operations at the Booth. “It’s grown to the point where at the end of it is a performance, which is kind of fun, too.”

And there are moments of recognizable teenage high spirits, like the impromptu break-dance showdown in the Booth lobby during a snack break. 

Theater is a hands-on artform

A week before the DrumatiX taping, students were at the other end of the production pipeline, some learning to operate soundboards and light boards while others wrestled spotlights out of road cases and bolted them to booms. A number of BPS students who had attended last year were on hand to help the newbies.

“Our August training is the entry point for a lot of our program participants,” says Sousa. “It’s really, really important, because it’s our most intensive time period we have with the young adults, especially a lot of the young adults that are new to the program. It’s where we all get together as a cohort.

“If they have to be making money, they might have to go work at Dunkin’ Donuts versus working with us, so that’s a barrier we can remove for them,” she says. “All of our training components are paid. And then we meet them at Boston University and get to know them. And after that, we start placing people in internships.” The internships are also paid, she says, usually by the employers, at $18 an hour for 120 hours during the school year.

Williams interned on sound and lights last year at the Berklee Performance Center. “It was great going from my school, coming out of a rehearsal where I’m the actor, then going to Berklee, not being the actor,” she says, “but seeing the actors on there, like, wow, that was just me a few hours ago, and now I’m backstage.” Last year’s Brighter Boston cohort even got to watch setup for a Lana Del Ray concert at Fenway Park, she says.

Azaria Hardmon, a student at John D. O’Brien High School, came to Brighter Boston last year after seeing an ad on Instagram and soon found herself interning with the nonprofit Celebrity Series of Boston, working in lighting. “I liked designing the colors, and they usually let us take full control,” Hardmon says.

“Last year I did my internship at Boston Symphony Orchestra in video and projection, and it was really nice,” says second year Brighter Boston student Lala Cooks-Beeks, a recent Boston Arts Academy graduate. “And then, because the BSO was actually really chill, I had an opportunity to be put on their overhire list, which is super great. Overhire is like, if they need any help setting anything up for shows, if they need to hire reinforcements for something, I’m on the list” as a freelance worker.

Two weeks at the Booth offers a solid head start on such opportunities.

“You walk into the Booth and [the students are] like, ‘Wow! This is all new, and they are trusting us to use these faces and all of their equipment,’” Sousa says, noting that Brighter Boston has also brought in equipment borrowed from local companies that support them.

“Giving us the space has allowed us to expand our career pathways,” she notes. “If we were not able to use their shop, we would not be able to teach people those skills. And we would not be able to place people in those jobs.” 

Learning how to use the equipment is only part of the benefits of Brighter Boston.

“There are the technical skills here, but there’s also stuff that is life skills,” Cooks-Beek says. “Like, take the responsibility on yourself to make sure whatever it is you’re doing gets done.”

They get guidance from professional mentors like Catherine Alfaro (CFA’18), a freelance stage manager and production electrician for the Boston Lyric Opera and many other local troupes. “I feel like my life has been shaped a lot by mentors, and so being able to give back was something that I jumped at immediately, as well as the opportunity to show high school students what it is that we do backstage.”

Brighter Boston founder Jentzen started by taking students to work with him in Boston theater, field trips of a sort “into these big beautiful spaces to work on shows,” Sousa says. “He would ask permission, and he was well-regarded as a designer so people said yes. And he saw the impact on his students, not only being in these big, beautiful spaces, but also being trusted with actually touching the equipment and doing real work.”

And BU is trusting them with that, too. Much of the work they did in their two weeks will remain as the “rep plot,” or repertory plot, a standard sound and lighting arrangement that can serve the Booth as a starting point for a variety of events in the fall.

The Booth connection was made by lighting designer and former CFA faculty member Aja Jackson, one of Brighter Boston’s many professional mentors, as Boston was coming out of the pandemic. 

“The very fabric of the Booth is a training ground for young artists,” Kontogiannis says. “That is how we built the building. [Brighter Boston] is a great community organization, you know, that’s really doing something innovative, and I think that’s really needed in Boston. Partnering with them completely makes sense if we’re here to teach the next generation of theater artists. And this is a group of theater artists that the School of Theatre might not be able to reach [otherwise].”

Brighter Boston has been able to attract so many new employer partners because they see earlier graduates working out in the world, Sousa says.

“When we’re onboarding a new sponsor for internships, and we see Rihanna from the program working in the background,” she says, “it’s really exciting, because it’s full circle. It takes time with workforce development. But we’re now starting to see these people working in the industry. It’s pretty cool.”