Today’s control booth (below) in the Black Box theatre of UMBC’s Performing Arts & Humanities Building is filled with sleek, cutting-edge equipment, like a Yamaha digital mixer, and used as much as a teaching lab as the nerve center for lighting and sound. While the technology may be eons ahead of that found in the control room of the past, though, nothing could ever replace the heart of shows past, as evidenced by (above) the underside of this plywood board used in the old theatre both as a makeshift tech table and a Sharpie-tastic yearbook of productions from as far back as 1993’s King Lear. The old theatre is currently being demolished to make way for the new Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Building, but this and other pieces of history are being preserved by the Department of Theatre.
