Projections designer, lover of cooking, and wrestling enthusiast John Erickson graduated from Fossil Ridge High School in 2010. Since then, he has attended Colorado State University and received a bachelor’s degree in theater. Erickson has lived in New York City for five years, working on the Broadway musical Be More Chill among many other jobs in tech. He now attends the University of Texas at Austin, and plans to get his master’s degree.     

Projections design is on its way to becoming more well-known, and it is a fairly new element of theater. Although people do not always know what it is by name, many have seen it without even knowing it. Erickson describes projections design as, “using video in theater.” By taking video, photos, or animation and programming it to be projected onto a surface, shows can go beyond a single background. It is used in musicals, plays, concerts, dance performances, and many more places.

For Erickson, high school was much better after a poor experience in junior high. Fossil gave Erickson the opportunity to find a place where he felt he belonged—the theater department. He was a part of every production in his four years of high school. His first role was in Beauty and the Beast, where he vividly remembers being in the chorus as “Villager #3” and the whisk for the song, “Be Our Guest.” Erickson’s final show was the musical Brigadoon where he played Mr. Lundie, an old, wise man. 

Through experiences in the plays and musicals, Erickson slowly considered his passion as his career. Erickson explained, “[High school] was when I started thinking maybe I wanted to become an actor, which would dishearten my mom greatly, but she was very supportive.” Despite wanting to go into a difficult and competitive field, Erickson says his mom has always been supportive of his goals.

During Erickson’s time in the Fossil theater department, most of the cast also helped with the technical aspects of productions. There was typically one stage manager, and a few people only interested in tech without acting. However, everyone acting also helped with whatever parts of tech needed more hands. Erickson helped a little with set building, and enjoyed learning about aspects of theater newest to him. “We had people like me, who just kind of liked the environment, and liked doing stuff with our hands. So we would help in the off times build sets, and, you know, enjoy it. Any chance someone would trust you with power tools was an exciting moment,” he claimed. In Erickson’s free time outside of rehearsals, he often played around with the lights and occasionally the sound board. He was happy to help wherever he could.

Another important program of Erickson’s high school experience was Ridge TV; when he was in the class, the final products were put on CD’s. “I think I just kind of eventually started doing more and more of the editing. I started watching tutorials about stuff like how to make a head explode and started doing stuff I was more interested in,” he recalled. From there, Erickson began to enjoy editing more and more. He remembers being inspired by Robert Rodriguez’s book on making independent films and worked very hard to edit a short film for Films On A Shoestring, or FOASS his Senior year. Erickson said, “I remember [my film] stood out because it had some kind of color correction. It was really bad color correction, but did at least have it.” 

While visiting CSU, Erickson fell in love with the sense of community there. It reminded him of Theater Club and made him feel right at home. He began in the theater program, acting in a couple shows a year. Erickson can summarize his acting career in college as, “I died a lot,” as in every production he was the character either killed off or lost to suicide. Erickson remembered, “My biggest starring role was in Spring Awakening, where I died at the ending. It was sort of an odd reputation to end up getting, as the guy who died in all the shows. My mother was still very supportive.” He likes to joke around and say that his mom is the reason he stopped acting, because she did not like to see him die in every show. However, college showed Erickson a new perspective in the acting realm, and he decided it was not for him.

“Acting in college was very eye opening, because I met a lot of people who really liked acting. And I really liked doing comedy. In the whole of my college acting career, I only think I did two comedies, but they were student run. I loved acting and working with other people. But I worked with a lot of people that I could clearly see had more passion for it, and were much better than I was. And I just hated memorizing lines, so so so so much. I felt like if that’s what acting was, then I didn’t really want to do it,” he explained. Erickson never heard of projections in high school—they were not a thing then. However, when looking to stay involved in theater in any way possible, Erickson asked what he could do to help on a student production and was asked to do projections—and with that he was introduced to his future career. He started designing for his first show only when he was in his first projections class. 

Senior year opened the doors into getting a job for Erickson. His artistic director brought in a guest projections designer from New York City, Alex Koch, to help with the show Arrestees 2.0. Erickson was glad to have guidance, as it was a weird show to work on, and it was also unique to learn from someone currently in the business for an updated take on the theater world. As the programmer for the guest designer, Erickson took video content and set it to be played with cues throughout the show. It was his most complicated show yet, set to run six projectors from three computers. Erickson asked Koch for recommendations for where to go and get a job after college, and he was so impressed with Erickson he was told to move to NYC after graduation, and he would help Erickson find work.

Just three days after graduating from CSU, Erickson moved to NYC. He immediately began to work on a show alongside his projections professor from college, and started to make connections through his professor and Koch. During five years of living there, Erickson worked on a total of 85 shows. For him, finding success meant making connections—meeting people in the field and being recommended for job openings.

Although Erickson enjoyed something different about each project he worked on, he has a few personal highlights. In 2017, Erickson went on tour for a month in Europe. He created projections for the band The Magnetic Fields’s 50 song memoir, containing 46 unique music videos. Erickson was proud of the show, as it combined all his previously learned skills into one cohesive project, including different styles of filming, hand-drawn items, graphic design, old films re-edited, visual effects, and of course editing. Erickson loved the environment of the show, saying, “Everyone was very chill. There weren’t any divas. Everyone there was just really happy to be there. Nobody had an attitude, everyone pitched in, and it was very much a family feel.” While on tour, Erickson helped run video tech for the show. He travelled across Scotland, Ireland, and England, ending the tour in London. 

Erickson entered the world of Broadway with the show Be More Chill, and watched as the musical grew up. Be More Chill began as a small show in New Jersey. Despite good audience response, bad critic reviews caused the show to close pretty quickly. As the show was closing, a cast album was created to be posted on Spotify. Although nobody knows how, the musical suddenly blew up on Spotify, with over ten million streams—second most listened to cast album on Spotify behind Hamilton. Directors rode this fan support and interest to bring the show back into Off-Broadway, and the show began to grow. Projections were added for the show’s return, and Erickson was hired. He loved the idea of adding it to the show: “It’s a show about technology, and so it’s a show that I think really, really benefited from having video.” Before Be More Chill even opened, the entire six week run of the show was sold out. About six months after the Off-Broadway debut, Be More Chill was announced to be coming to Broadway.