Concert stages may look effortless when the curtain rises, but backstage they are giant mechanical systems filled with moving parts, tight timelines, and constant problem-solving.
At Carnegie Mellon University, students are learning how to tackle those challenges firsthand through Entertainment Engineering, a new course that combines mechanical engineering and theater production to solve fundamental problems for the live entertainment industry.
Developed jointly by professors Phil LeDuc and Mark Bedillion from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Kevin Hines and David Boevers from the School of Drama, Entertainment Engineering brings students together from two fields that rarely overlap in the classroom but constantly intersect behind the scenes of live productions.
In its first semester, students collaborated on a challenge sponsored by TAIT, the global company behind staging and automation systems used in concerts for artists like Taylor Swift, theater productions on Broadway and the West End, and live events around the world including the Olympics. The company itself has strong roots at CMU as its CEO Adam Davis and dozens of its employees are CMU alumni.
Students show off the tools they built to adjust the height of staging legs.
