Houston is known for its expansive theatre scene, housing big names like The Wortham, The Alley, the Houston Ballet, Jones Hall, and TUTS. The downtown Theatre District is the gathering place for Houston’s Broadway-sized theatres and more intimate stages as well, that spans 17 blocks and contains 13,000 seats as a whole. With such a big entertainment center, it’s no wonder that our staff has worked and enjoyed a lot of these stages. The Staging Solutions team comes from all over. Utilizing a broad spectrum of skills and aptitudes allows our company to dream bigger than the competition.
At Staging Solutions we create brand experiences through media, activations, and events. Our staff members have a wide array of talents and backgrounds, but one overlap many of them share is theatre. Taking part in theatre helped prepare a lot of our team for their roles at Staging Solutions, and most are still involved to this day.
One of our creatives at Staging Solutions, Tim Thomson, grew up around the stage. He was eleven years old when he starred in a college production and fell in love with the entire process. In high school, he considered the technological side of theatre a hobby that would eventually fade out of his life, and during college he started working full-time in television and creating independent films. While film and video became his career, once a friend introduced him to designing sound and visuals for Stages Repertory Theatre he became enthralled with the immediacy and intimacy of live theatre.
For the last twenty years, Tim has designed for many theatres in town, including Stages, The Alley Theatre, and The Catastrophic Theatre, on which he continues to also serve as an active board member. When Tim became involved with Staging Solutions, he realized that they were also doing theatre in a sense– creating intimate, live experiences for an audience. At one point it struck him, these were his two worlds coming together. He was getting to make films, but make them for theatre. His love of the arts and his passion for media could be combined in this new career path.
Another one of our own, Elena Coates, wouldn’t be at Staging Solutions if it wasn’t for her deep involvement in theatre. After meeting Tim at Stages, where she worked both as an actress and an administrator, she was invited over to join Staging Solutions’ family of creatives. Elena brought over her talent for writing and creative storytelling (among many other abilities) that she credits to being honed in theatre.
“Telling a story in a particular voice is something I work at all the time, and that’s what theatre is about.”
She also attributes theatre with helping shape her talent in voice-work due to knowing what story you’re telling and to whom. A woman of many talents, Elena currently does voice-work for Texas Originals, a weekly radio segment profiling individuals whose lives and achievements have had a profound influence upon Texas history and culture. Texas Originals is now in it’s third season, and you can hear each episode here.
Staging Solutions’ president, Bill Fitch, lettered in theatre in high school and continues to be involved in fine arts to this day. Bill has been committed to supporting local theatre whether it be a small independent organization or, his favorite, a public school theatre. He has also had the opportunity to work on multiple Broadway-level theatres for corporate events and feels the most comfortable in that setting. Bill’s love for corporate theatre stemmed from his experiences with real theatre. Without the foundation and passion in theatre, Staging Solutions would never have been born. Staging Solutions is a business built out of the love shared for the theatre, and we’ve been delighting audiences ever since.
Our creative team at Staging Solutions is a force to be reckoned with. Everyone comes together to create amazing brand experiences using innovative aspects such as our in-house design services, virtual reality, a dynamic warehouse crew devoted to constructing custom installations, and more. We thrive in situations where we need to create imaginative solutions for our client’s needs. We don’t believe in events that are too big or too small, an inventive solution can turn an event into the talk of the town. Our staff at Staging Solutions are down to earth people who continue to dream big and deliver bigger for our clients. Theatre will always be at the heart of Staging Solutions. As Bill says, “If you love what you do, you’ll never have to work a day in your life.”