Pat MacKay Diversity In Design Scholarship winner Elena Hewett reports for Live Design on the first day of this year's USITT in Long Beach, CA.
March 18, 2026. Long Beach, CA
The palm trees cast soft shadows across the pavement as they caught the first rays of daylight. Attendees clustered at the base of the Convention Center stairs, a jumble of bodies dappled with early-morning sunshine. USITT volunteers wove their way through the mass, handing out pre-printed conference passes and directions to the nearest coffee shop with equal ease. Attendees smothered their yawns behind sketchbooks, filing into USITT's provided transport buses, headed to various off-site workshops.
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Professional Development Workshops give attendees of all ages the chance to learn new skills in the field of their choosing. Full-day workshops allow learners to go in-depth with their expert teachers, while partial-day options have a narrower scope. The mentorship provided in these workshops is invaluable, but there's a hidden advantage: peer-based networking. USITT casts a wide net and workshops give attendees the chance to connect with their peers in a focused environment. The collaborative elements of the workshops creates the perfect opportunity for bonding, and these connections can be reinforced at any number of USITT's networking events.
The first of these took place at 5pm at the Long Beach Terrace Theater. The lobby of the theater transformed, packed wall to wall with people chatting amiably. Despite ambient temperatures pushing past 90°F, the event spilled out into the patio overflow, where attendees sipped iced drinks under the fading sunlight.
At 6:30pm, volunteers guided the mass of people into the theater space itself. The room was packed, and the excitement was palpable. It takes a special kind of show to keep audience energy high for nearly two hours, but USITT delivered. Performances included the drag queen Dolly Levi, as well as Elvira from Chicago, and the Mariachi Divas, fresh from their knock-out performance in the 2026 Super Bowl Halftime Show.
The product unveilings were a wonderful success. The Costume Source walked the room with its new product, a wireless mic belt redesigned to fit underneath a wig. Chauvet demonstrated its new footlight system, the COLORado, and ADJ reps talked through the new compact CMY moving head. Free swag hand-outs between every demo had students leaping out of their seats in the hopes of securing a free t-shirt or cowboy-boot shaped drink cozy.
Inclusion and community took center-stage in every speech. The land acknowledgement was paired with a call-to-action from USITT executive director Laura Lee Everett. She asked all present to set aside time to learn the history of Native populations in the L.A. area. Bill Sapsis spoke about creating in-roads for women and nonbinary people within the technician space. Jeff Flowers called for attendees to think intentionally about their communities, and to work to cultivate community in all aspects of their lives.
The talented emcee, drag queen Morgan McMichaels, reminded attendees that we have a duty to support our undocumented brothers and sisters, now more than ever. She was met with thunderous applause.
Kasey Allee-Foreman, president of the Board of Directors, reminded members that our community has a duty to advocate for our beliefs, especially in elections: “Our voices matter. Every single one of our voices matter."
Elena Hewett
(No part of this work was created with Generative AI.)
Elena Hewett is a 2025 Pat MacKay Diversity In Design recipient currently completing a BA in Comparative Genocide Studies alongside a BFA in Lighting Design at at Western Michigan University. They have been offered employment at Upstaging this summer.