Ivo Kersmaekers(Belgium)
Technical Director and Production Manager
Chair of OISTAT Technology Commission
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Formal education of theatre technicians and specialist is relativly new.
For many years, and still today, people end up working in theatre by coincidence, like it, and stay there.
They don’t have the education for it, as they often come from different walks of live, and sometimes they even don’t have the required skills.
But as the theatre world is a very special place, they learn, helped by their collegues and by experience.
Some of them become very good at their job, and clime the hyrarchic ladder to become manager or specialist.
The sad reality was that these people could not be payed or hired to the level of their job, as they did not have the dimplomas to proof their skills.
That’s why the Governement in Belgium started to form professional competence profiles, stating what skills people working on different levvels should have.
Along with that, they started a programm of assesments to give out experience certificates.
These certificats are equal to diplomas.
Similar initiatives devolope across borders.
In the European opera world was the need for stage technicians to broaden their view, and collect experiences in other houses.
That’s why Opera Europa, the organisation that gathers all the European operas, organises and regulates the excange of stage technicians among each other.
This orginsation required a lot of planning towards common skills and risks, and is a valuable experience to learn from.
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Panelist: Ivo Kersmaekers (Belgium)
Technical Director and Production Manager, Chair of OISTAT Technology Commission
After his studies of stage management and theatre technology in Brussels, Ivo Kersmaekers has been stage manager in the major Belgian theatre companies for 25 years. The last 8 years he has been the technical director of the biggest private theatre producer in the country, doing about 16 productions a year, spread over around 1500 shows. Recently he has worked as a theatre technical advisor for ShowTex.
Ivo is the immediate past president of BASTT (the Belgian Association of Scenographers and Theatre Technicians) and in this function co-writer of the professional competence profiles for stage technicians. In OISTAT he is an official delegate of the technology commission, and chair of this commission since November 2005. One of his projects is the collaboration with similar organizations like Opera Europa.
