Both Mahoney and Pitt see Get Technical! as an opportunity to showcase their respective departments’ work. Mahoney explains, ‘the stage department looks after the production’s crew – everyone who works on the show each evening – as well as maintaining the stage, the set, and all the elements that are manually flown throughout the performance.’ It takes at least eight people from his team to keep Moulin Rouge running day to day – ‘so it’s a big job,’ he adds.

Pitt, who has been with Moulin Rouge since it opened in the West End in 2022, leads a team of six, alongside additional part-time staff. ‘My job is to make sure all the wigs are styled every day, and that everyone’s make-up looks exactly as it should,’ she says. ‘Then, when cast members come off mid-show, we have to ensure everything is ready for them to go straight back on.’

As they describe their daily routines, the pace sounds hectic. Yet part of theatre’s magic lies in the fact that all of this work remains unseen. ‘Because we do it every day, we sometimes forget how interesting and secretive it all is,’ says Pitt. ‘Actually, so much more happens off stage than it does on stage – when you give people an insight into what happens off stage, I think their love of theatre grows even more.’

The path into a backstage theatre career isn’t always clear. Pitt followed a traditional route, training in special effects, make-up, prosthetics and hair for performance at the London College of Fashion before, as she puts it, ‘carrying on from there.’ Mahoney’s journey was less direct: originally training as an actor, he later ‘stumbled into’ backstage work as a crew member. ‘There’s really not one single route into it,’ Pitt says.

‘Most people just tend to fall into it, and that’s great. But the problem is that we don’t reach the demographics we should,’ she continues. One of Get Technical!’s key aims is to open people’s eyes to the breadth of opportunities available. ‘People aren’t aware how many jobs there are,’ Mahoney says. ‘Because the point of our jobs is that, if we do them well enough, people shouldn’t notice.’

The need to develop talent outside of performers is something the wider industry is thinking about, too. The new RAD Musical Theatre syllabus, for example, asks students of all ages to interrogate musical theatre as a whole. ‘It obviously trains and develop skills in acting, singing and dancing, but we’ve also added an important element of musical theatre in context,’ explains Alex Lowe, RAD Deputy Artistic Director. ‘We’re asking students to understand a production – we talk about set design, lots of different aspects of the staging and about people’s different roles and responsibilities.’

The syllabus also requires students to create a project of their or their teacher’s choice. ‘We’ve had young people presenting what a Mary Poppins costume might look like if she were in a different era,’ Lowe says, ‘and even had the cast of Shrek made out of toilet rolls. It comes back to thinking about set design, lighting or props. It encourages the understanding of the broad range of musical theatre, rather than just singing, acting and dance.’

At Get Technical!, the audience is treated to all the backstage secrets. One by one, the departments walk them through the mechanics of Moulin Rouge: demonstrating how costumes are fastened with hidden magnets, guiding them through the show’s complex lighting and revealing the precise automated coordination required to bring every moment together. ‘Every ten minutes is completely different,’ Mahoney says.

‘It does run as a performance,’ Pitt continues. And the team work on the Get Technical! show for weeks before opening the theatre doors. ‘We do actually have to rehearse,’ laughs Mahoney. ‘It’s nice to show people how much fun we have,’ Pitt adds. ‘It can be a little bit daunting for us because we choose to be backstage, but we’re suddenly thrust in front of nearly 1,000 people. It can be quite terrifying.’

The audience makes the whole thing worthwhile, though. ‘The reaction from the crowd is always tremendous – the auditorium is alive with people,’ Pitt says. When the lighting changes, there are audible oohs and ahhs, with the room cheering en masse when the big set pieces fly in and out. ‘We have some of the best people using some of the most exciting technology,’ Mahoney says. ‘It is really, really cool.’ At the end, the backstage team are asked a series of pre-sent questions. ‘We tell them how we got into the industry, what we do day to day. You can tell people are really interested,’ Pitt says.

After each Get Technical! performance, Pitt is inundated with CVs ‘from people looking for work experience. It really does boost people’s enthusiasm, which is fantastic.’ For Pitt, this is the most important outcome of the event: not just demystifying what happens behind the scenes, but actively inspiring people to see a place for themselves there, too. ‘There is still this stigma with theatre, that you can’t make a career from it,’ she says. ‘Lots of people just see it as a hobby.’

As someone who works in technical theatre, you’re someone ‘who has a trade,’ Mahoney continues. ‘Not only is working backstage a craft in its own right, but these are also real, quantifiable, transferable skills,’ he says. ‘If you are the head of lighting, for example, you could also work as an electrician.’

If Get Technical! leaves the audience with anything, Pitt hopes it is the understanding that working backstage is a viable career path. ‘It is great to be able to stand on stage and say we make good money, we create something incredible, and we bring thousands – if not millions – of people to the theatre each year with these shows,’ she says. ‘It’s such a well-paid creative profession, and people don’t think about it.’

In the aftermath of the Covid pandemic, the work Get Technical! is doing feels increasingly vital, as the industry urgently needs new talent. ‘We lost so many technical professionals because we were all out of work for a year and a half. It was a massive hit to the theatre world, so newcomers are really important,’ Mahoney says. ‘We need new blood in technical theatre, so the best thing we can do is pass our knowledge on.’

Lowe agrees: ‘people know about becoming performers, but there’s just not as much education out there about backstage careers.’ Seeing what goes on behind the curtain is, the pair believe, essential to getting the technical theatre message out there. Pitt concludes: ‘Rather than just thinking, “oh I might like to be on stage,” I’d love people to think, “I’d love to be part of the behind-the-scenes family, too.”’

WATCH

Get Technical! at the Piccadilly Theatre