This week on 8111, Amy Young!! Amy grew up in Manhattan where her dad was a stage manager on Broadway. She spent a lot of time behind the scenes watching her father work and when he was busy, she was able to go see plays and musicals for free. At sixteen her dad landed a job as the manager of the Curran theatre in San Francisco. Amy’s mom was an emergency room nurse.
They moved out to Marin and Amy finished high school at Redwood High in Larkspur. After high school she enrolled at College of Marin in the drama department. There she studied lighting, stagecraft, and theatre stage management. After college Amy was in a bad accident that derailed her goals of heading out of town and she wound up studying further at ACT and working locally through IATSE Local 16.
She worked jobs all over town and eventually landed a long term gig on the electric crew at the San Francisco Opera. One day she got a call to head up to grip at ILM when they were working on Always. Brad Jerrell kept Amy gainfully employed for several years at ILM where she worked on many shows including; The Rocketeer (doing pyro), T2, multiple Star Treks, and costumes with Annie Polland on the Star Wars Special Editions.
Amy returned to College of Marin where she enrolled in a fire science program and wound up lecturing around the area on fire safety. She worked with the Marin Shakespeare Company, ran the local space museum and solving problems at every turn. Today Amy is mostly retired and does volunteer work at schools, the local science museum, and in her community. It was incredible to talk to Amy and hear her story.
