Backstage Center Stage 2025: Tech/Design Workshop – Take a Bow!

June 18, 2025

More than 30 theater educators and directors gathered in St. Cloud on June 16th for what’s quickly becoming an annual event – Backstage Center Stage: Tech/Design Workshop. The 2025 workshop took place in two St. Cloud venues, GREAT Theatre and Paramount Center for the Arts, and the day was hosted by Dr. Stephanie Lein Walseth, Theater Education Specialist in Professional Development and Resource Programs at Perpich Center.

Educators participate in the Backstage Center Stage 2025: Tech/Design Workshop on June 16, 2025

Workshop topics ranged from working with sound systems and lighting design to techniques for painting scenery and ways to support theater students’ mental health. Many thanks to the highly respected group of presenters: Tim Catlett, Mark Hennigs, Steven Sanders, and Mike Smith.

Even though a passing summer storm caused an afternoon power outage, the learning and collaboration was undeterred! Participants left with many practical tools and strategies they could use in their own classrooms and theater spaces. Several commented on taking away a better understanding of how to manage microphones, as well as wanting to better support a culture of safety in their theater programs.

Equally important for the day was the opportunity to develop and strengthen relationships with other theater educators/directors. Said one participant, “It was nice to spend time with people who do what I do—especially since, like so many of us, I am basically the only one in my district who does this.”

Lein Walseth reflected on the day, too. “We know that the tech/design aspects of theater are so varied, so vital, and so key to both the safety and success of a theater program. We were thrilled that educators, directors, tech directors, designers, teaching artists, auditorium managers, and more were able to join us from across the state to learn in such great spaces. This year’s iteration of Backstage Center Stage felt like a rousing success!”

Educators participate in the Backstage Center Stage 2025: Tech/Design Workshop on June 16, 2025

Three days after attending the Theater Roundtable and Backstage Center Stage workshop a participant shared, “I spent this afternoon at our Sheldon Theatre in Red Wing… guiding our summer youth theatre camp kiddos in how counterweight math works to fly set pieces and how details in set design matter. I found myself using several gems that I took away from the two recent workshops. Oh, and every person in our theatre world that has seen it has been blown away by the simple wagon brake solution that Mark from GREAT shared with us!”

Stephanie Lein Walseth, Ph.D. is a theater educator, artist, administrator, and scholar with over 25 years experience working with students and artists of all ages. She has served as an affiliate faculty member at Augsburg University since 2011, and as an instructor and curriculum developer at the University of Minnesota and Penumbra Theatre Company. In the professional theater realm, she served decade-long tenures with Full Circle Theater and Penumbra, worked in leadership roles with Theater Mu/Mu Performing Arts and Mixed Blood Theatre, and served in artistic and/or administrative roles with Sod House Theater, Playwrights’ Center, Guthrie Theater, Native Voices at the Autry, Portland Stage Company, and Oakland Theater Project, among many others. Stephanie received her Ph.D. in Theatre Historiography from the University of Minnesota, and her research focuses on African American, Asian American, and Native American theater, and the institutional politics of relationships between theaters of color and predominantly white institutions. Her writing has appeared in HowlRound, Theatre Topics, e-misférica, The Baylor Journal of Theatre and Performance, and the Palgrave anthology Theater, Performance and Change. In her role at Perpich since 2018, Stephanie is pleased to support K-12 and College/University theater educators across the state, as well as all educators interested in using the tools of theater in their pedagogical practice.