The show ends with raucous applause, yet another successful performance concluded. The actors take their bows, the curtains close and the audience below murmurs about the show. And Maggie Yan (12), high in the light booth, slowly dims the spotlights. 

Maggie joined as a member of tech theater in fourth grade at Harker and works each year to bring dance productions, musicals and plays to fruition. Initially mesmerized by the possibility of working with her hands and building something out of nothing, she freely admits that a major allure of tech theater was its ready access to power tools. 

Though her reasons for participating in tech theater grew and changed over the past eight years, her appreciation of power tools — and the importance of responsibility that comes with tech theater — remained constant.

“Especially during high school, it’s now more about the community than it is the power tools,” Maggie said. “It’s the people that have kept me here. If the teachers weren’t so cool and the people doing tech theater weren’t so cool, I would probably have stopped around quarantine. All these people around me are super talented, super smart — it’s a little bit of like, ‘how did I get here?’”

As one of the few upperclassmen currently in tech theater, Maggie’s time in high school and in the theater program was molded by the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic. She even considered quitting tech theater in favor of volleyball, and, with a policy exception, joined the Certificate Program in Tech Theater as a sophomore. Maggie looks back on her winding path to see certainty. Fellow tech theater member Sam Parupudi (11) looks back to appreciate Maggie’s continuous mentorship and support. 

“Maggie is the perfect mix of an upperclassman who’s willing to guide you through something you don’t really know about and a friend who can be there when you fail at something,” Sam said. “She’s someone you can lean on or ask for advice and it won’t sound stupid. You can ask Maggie the dumbest questions and she’ll sit there and explain everything to you: she’s very willing to take time out of her day to help someone even if it doesn’t help her back. And I think that’s beautiful.”

Maggie, in return, embraces and supports the community that tech theater provides her with. From her recent attendance at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh over the past summer, where Harker performed The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, to her seventh grade fall play, Maggie treasures the welcoming nature of her teachers and peers in tech theater. She credits much of her growth to their encouragement and the supportive environment they have engendered. 

“Tech theater is less serious than everyone makes it out to be in their head,” Maggie said. “We make goofs, we make stupid mistakes, we laugh, we cry, we do all these things. It’s not something to be anxious about. It’s all these people that are super patient, cooperative and all around really nice.”

Maggie recalls the fear that she sometimes felt at the beginning of her tech theater career. She realizes that tech can often have a formidable reputation but believes that patience, willingness to learn and effort can surmount obstacles that lie in her path. Drawing upon her experiences with tech theater, she encourages everyone to take daunting things one step at a time.

“Things that look very big and scary and intimidating are not usually as big and scary and intimidating as you thought they were,” Maggie said. “Don’t look at something from afar for too long because then you’ll overwhelm yourself. You’ll be on step one and say ‘what about step six?’ Go for step one right now.”

Tech theater is not by any measure easy; Maggie had her own fill of mishaps and mistakes and has done her best to learn and improve from them. Maggie is proud of the time and dedication that everyone in the performing arts program puts forth to make each and every show a success. Close friend Selina Chen recognizes the effort and purpose that Maggie puts into tech theater. 

“She is a really artistic person,” Selina said. “Even though she does tech theater — which most people don’t really consider as an art — she does visual arts like sculpture, ceramics. When she creates art, I really appreciate how much meaning she puts into it. Her being able to put out art holds purpose to her. I think that is something that I see really heavily reflected in her character.”

Reflecting on her time in tech theater, Maggie sees both purpose and happenstance in her path. She feels grateful to all her friends, colleagues and mentors who made her time there so impactful to her, and is thankful for the years she has spent with the program. 

“Finishing a production is always satisfying,” Maggie said. “That task has been done, and it’s been done successfully. Now I’m free, and I did the thing I was told to do. You never regret doing your last show, but you wish you could do more of it, almost, even though everyone’s tired at the end of it. You put in all this work and this is it: it’s come to an end and it’s a feeling of when something great ends and you sit there like, ‘Oh yeah, it’s, it’s over.’”