Georgie Hill, Chief electrician, Wexford Festival Opera
You would be forgiven for thinking that the chief electrician at Wexford Festival Opera would be some surly Irish fella called Mick or Gerry. Forgiven but wrong. The person responsible is a 28-year-old Englishwoman, from Hampshire, who tried drama and carpentry before settling on a career in production lighting. This is her seventh consecutive year at the festival.
The 2006 event, which starts on Wednesday, will see two operas, Donizetti's Don Gregorio and Conrad Susa's Transformations, performed on alternate nights. As they are on at the same venue, the DúMhuire Theatre, it means a lot of work for the stage and lighting crews. "The stage guys take down the set after the performance and get the new one up that evening. The next morning we come in and turn the lighting around. It basically involves a lot of working at heights, hanging out of ladders and so on. It's very exciting."
The festival's opening night will be the culmination of five weeks of preproduction for Hill and her crew. "During rehearsals we work pretty long days, from about 9am to 10pm. We work closely with the lighting designer and basically realise what he wants to do."
Of the four people in the lighting crew, only one is a man. Is production lighting a magnet for women? "It would have been very much a man's industry, but there are women sneaking in and taking over."
Will there be opening-night nerves? "Everyone will be nervous. Five weeks of rehearsal time sounds a lot, but it always runs away on you. There are so many things that can go wrong, and everyone involved just wants it to be perfect."
• Wexford Festival Opera runs until November 5th. See www.wexfordfestivalopera.com.