Crew · p.74
Marcus Okonkwo-St.Clair — both cards, one hand.
Senior power distribution and rigging electrician; lead on the deck for arena work. Holds both ETCP Entertainment Electrician (EE-22148) and ETCP Rigger-Arena (RA-08661) cards, which is unusual — most card-holders carry one or the other, and the two cards live on two separate people. Twelve years on the road before joining the shop in 2018.
Marcus Okonkwo-St.Clair came to the shop in 2018, eight years into a touring career that started in 2007 with a regional country act and then deepened — three years with a national bluegrass tour, two years as the deck electrician for an Atlanta-based touring opera company, four years on a country headliner that did sixteen-truck arena work across forty states. Twelve years on the road before he took a desk lease ten blocks from his apartment in East Nashville and stopped sleeping in a bus. He is still occasionally surprised by it.
The two cards
Most ETCP card-holders carry one card. The two-card combination is unusual because the work is unusual: an ETCP Entertainment Electrician knows how to feed a chain motor; an ETCP Rigger-Arena knows how to hang one. The combination matters when the same person is going to be on the deck both verifying the rigging hand-off and verifying the electrical hand-off, which happens on a small touring crew where the headcount is tight.
Marcus took the Entertainment Electrician exam in 2014, on a Sunday in Atlanta, while still on the country-headliner tour. He took the Rigger-Arena exam in 2017, on a Tuesday in Las Vegas during a tour break. Both cards renewed in 2022 with continuing-education credits earned through USITT’s annual conference and through the ESTA rigging task group meetings he attends quarterly.
The work he leads
On the deck, Marcus runs the lead for P-04 (stage-rigging electrical) and is the cross-trained backup lead on P-01 (Cam-Lok feeder) and P-02 (distros). He is the one who walks the motor truss with the rigging vendor at the pre-call meeting; the one who calls standing by on the comms when a motor circuit is keyed; the one who signs the rigging log at every pick. The rigging-electrical safety record at the shop — zero recordable incidents in nine years — is in significant part his work.
The press
Marcus also operates the bay’s Heidelberg Windmill platen press. Raylene operates it badly; Marcus operates it well. He learned letterpress at Hatch Show Print — the historic Nashville letterpress operation downtown — on weekend volunteer afternoons in 2019 and 2020. The bound issues of this publication that exist as physical objects exist mostly because of Marcus’s patience with the press. He uses Cooper Black for the cover blocks and a wedge of Gothic 745 for the masthead.
Hatch and Cooper Black
The aesthetic of the printed issues is a deliberate echo of Hatch Show Print’s vernacular — woodtype, blocky, the cover masthead set in Cooper Black with a single red rule between the wordmark and the publication tag. The cover photographs come from each tour’s production designer (with permission) or from one of the photographers Marcus has worked with over twelve years on the road. The cover dates are set in a wedge of Gothic 745 with the date in a contrasting weight.
Outside the bay
Marcus is married to a fiber artist (Imani St.Clair) who works at the Belcourt Theatre as a projectionist. They live in East Nashville, a fifteen-minute walk from the bay. They have a cat (Murray, named after the rigger). He cooks; she stretches canvas. They go to Mountain Goats shows when the band comes through.
How to reach him
For trade questions — particularly anything involving an ETCP card, a chain motor, or a rigging-class circuit — email marcus@briley-stage.example. He reads it Tuesdays and Thursdays. For booking, use the advance form.