Theatre Arts + Mechanical Engineering: UMN Alum Josh Koser Builds World-Class Spectacles
From stadium-filling world tours to amusement parks to cruise ships, University of Minnesota alum Josh Koser works to bring to life some of the biggest spectacles in entertainment. The 2021 graduate works for TAIT, a worldwide entertainment company that has been partnering with artists and brands for the past 45 years to bring creative dreams to life. Starting off in the rock n’ roll scene, TAIT has been pioneering concert staging for years, and has grown to produce extraordinary live events across over 30 countries and all 7 continents. Some of their recent productions include work with Taylor Swift, Cirque Du Soleil, Nike, Beyoncé, and The Olympics. As a mechanical integrator, he is a vital part of the crew that develops and implements the technical elements that make these large events possible. Most recently, he has been working to bring Paul McCartney’s vision to life for his Got Back tour, which came to Minneapolis on October 17.
Amid rehearsals for this tour, Koser reflects on his time at the University of Minnesota and all of the invaluable skills he developed through his double-major in theatre arts, with a focus in technical direction, and mechanical engineering. He has turned dual passions into a career, seamlessly merging the creative and technical facets of his skillset to bring dreams and ideas to life.
Setting the Stage
Pursuing this double major was no accident for Koser. His love of both subjects began long before he came to the University of Minnesota. “I grew up a theatre kid, so I've always been in and around theatre,” he explains. “I was in front of the curtain a few times, but I found a pretty comfortable place behind the curtain, doing stuff I really liked. I did a lot of that in high school.” While participating in school productions and working on local live events in his hometown of Mankato, Minnesota, he still found time to indulge his other passions. “I also was a STEM kid, so I did lots of the science and math and engineering-like classes. I knew coming to the end of high school that those were both things that I really liked doing.”
Despite developing his interests in high school, it wasn’t until he became involved with the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT) in college that he learned about careers that combined his interests. “Coming out of high school, I knew there had to be companies out there that did the massive, complex live events that we were starting to see a lot of. I didn’t know how or who or why, but I knew that it was out there, and I knew it was cool.” Without direct connections to the industry, he used his time in undergrad to build his network from the ground up, starting with co-founding the University of Minnesota’s USITT Student Chapter.
Later becoming the president of the USITT, Koser reflects fondly on his time working with them on campus, and even credits the experience with his first introduction to TAIT. “USITT as an organization is a pretty wide group of folks across the Live Entertainment industry that are all super into helping developing professionals learn stuff. I met face-to-face with TAIT for the first time at USITT conferences.” He remembers the time he spent in the organization as being very hands-on and career-focused, “It’s a lot of exposure to people that are actually out in the world doing the thing, which is a good perspective to have as you’re hopefully learning how to do the thing yourself. It’s a great organization.” He encourages current students to get involved by attending one of the many valuable events they hold throughout the semester.
Mapping the Layout
Koser spent the majority of his undergraduate career hopping across the Washington Avenue Bridge, moving between the Rarig Center on the west bank and the mechanical engineering department on the east. While it wasn’t always an easy balance, he appreciates the value of having the experience between two majors that appear to be polar opposites. “Working between CLA [the College of Liberal Arts] and CSE [the College of Science & Engineering] certainly requires some going back and forth, but once people understood what I was attempting to accomplish, everybody was super supportive.” He notes that believing in himself throughout his undergraduate career was a big factor in his success. “Advocating for yourself in the process is huge,” he says. “Stand up, stick up for yourself, speak up for what you want, and you can usually make it happen.”
Koser relished each of his majors and their differences, all while finding that silver thread that tied them together. He’s glad he pursued his interests and hopes that today’s students will do the same. His advice for today’s double-majors? “Don’t be afraid to do it. Try lots of stuff. You don’t have to be good at it; college is exactly the right time to go figure out what’s interesting to you.” The key is to find opportunities to gain experience in what you’re passionate about. “I did freelance live events throughout all five years of college, which was a really good complement to what I was learning in school, to actually attempt to apply it, sometimes fail to do so, and learn lessons in the process.”
Now working in the professional entertainment world, he understands the value of gaining that experience and learning along the way. “I would strongly encourage anyone else to do that,” he says. “Try to get out and get a little taste of the real world while you’re still in school and have a bit of a safety net to work with.”
Spotlight on the Stage
Koser reflects on his time within the theatre arts & dance department fondly, giving credit to many of the soft skills he learned along the way. “We have four or five hundred people in our headquarters [at TAIT], so figuring out where folks are at, what challenges they’re having, and making sure that you can understand and empathize with those is critical when you’re trying to get something done really fast.” Koser's University of Minnesota theatre experience was key to honing the communication and problem-solving skills he uses daily in his career.
While collaborating with his team at TAIT is paramount to completing a project, communicating with outside creatives is just as important. “Being able to speak intelligently and confidently with our clients who are sometimes pretty large is certainly important.” A critical part of his role involves walking an artist and their team through how TAIT’s mechanisms will work with their show, both for execution and safety reasons, and being able to communicate that effectively is imperative to things running smoothly. When they don’t, though, TAIT is there to help. “When we’re in the trenches solving something that broke, those actual, practical things that I learned in college do still hold up the same—zip ties and tape still work just as well.”
Working in the theatre department provided Koser with an entire wheelhouse of problem-solving skills that he continues to employ. “There’s a lot of things you learn working in a theatre environment that’s a little scrappier than where I work now. Figuring out how to get stuff done with limited resources is a really valuable skill to have.” Being able to take a step back from a problem and understanding how to move forward is a vital skill for Koser, especially when working on tight schedules and set budgets. “It’s important to figure out what the right level of rigor is to apply to a problem. We build giant custom machines, so sometimes you need to have a fully designed, fully engineered, super-duper vetted to-the-moon-and-back solution, and sometimes you need to grab a roll of tape.”
From the skills learned to the experiences had and connections made, Koser nods to the many possibilities his time in the theatre department opened up to him. “It’s a massively wide field. If you find something you like, there’s probably someone out there that does it.”
Curtain Call
Now, you might be asking yourself: What does a mechanical integrator do? Some days, even Koser asks himself the same question. “Fresh chaos every day. I rarely do the same thing twice, which I really like.” When it comes to explicitly mapping out his responsibilities every day, though, a pattern begins to emerge. Koser's team collaborates with artists on visionary projects, from amusement park installations to concert sets, ensuring both the artistic vision is executed and the structures are mechanically sound and fully operational.“Ideally, we jump on at the end of design, we understand what the thing we’re gonna go try and achieve is, and then help bring that touchpoint to the people that are building it.”
A huge consideration that Koser and his team need to keep in mind when working on productions like the Got Back tour, though, is making sure the mechanisms they are building can be taken down, transported, and rebuilt over and over again. “A big thing with touring is you have to pack it up and put it on a truck every day, so we help a lot with making sure that can be an efficient process that is as painless as possible.” In his experience, building a show from the ground up in a matter of hours just to break it back down and load it back into a truck is a huge collaborative effort. “An average arena show, they’re gonna show up at 6 or 7 o’clock in the morning, dump 15 or 20 semi trucks full of gear, and at 6 o’clock in the evening, they’re gonna be ready to have a show. Then at 11 o’clock, the show’s done, they pack it up and go do it again somewhere else the next day. It takes some serious, complex choreography to make that reliably happen day in and day out.”
He gets plenty of hands-on work as well, especially with the substantial facilities TAIT has to make dreams come to life. “TAIT has a lot of assets, so we can quickly stack together building blocks and come up with a product, or if it’s something crazy that nobody’s ever done before, we can do top-to-bottom custom whatever you can think of. We can do it in-house, and if we can’t, we know someone who does.” Depending on the size of the project, Koser works on teams ranging from ten to hundreds of people to build and implement the mechanisms that make creative visions come to life. Seamless collaboration is vital and requires much more than technical skills and delivering a product. “Knowing how to do your job is important, but being someone who people want to work with is even more valuable, I think. Having a reputation as someone who does a good job and can be held accountable is something I strive for myself and look for in the people that I collaborate with on projects.”
The Next Act
“I was the kid taking stuff apart and building random stuff in the garage, so getting paid to do that was kind of the dream.” Koser is able to do exactly what he loves every day, integrating the variety of skills he learned between the Theatre arts & dance department and mechanical engineering, but that doesn’t come without its usual risks, especially when working on large, time-sensitive projects. “Failing is totally okay, I goof up all the time. As long as you own your mistakes, help to correct them, and learn from them nobody cares. Becoming comfortable with that took me a long time but it is a really important part of being an effective collaborator on highly complex, fast-paced projects as well as a person in general.”
As much as he is an expert in what he does, Koser has an opportunity to learn every day and use his talent to turn his passions into creative masterpieces for millions of people to see. “It’s cool to see something I worked on get that huge. That’s not something I ever thought I would get to be a part of.” In the future, he’s looking forward to continuing to improve upon his process and continue to bring audiences unforgettable experiences.
Theatre Arts Program Information
This story was written by Caroline Miltich, an undergraduate student in CLA.
