AUBURN — Bill Hamilton oversaw the installation of a massive, 54-foot lighting catwalk last month in front of the stage at the Community Little Theatre that replaced a ladder system he had designed 30 years earlier.

Hamilton jokes that at CLT, he is a behind-the-scenes kind of guy, and he is, definitely, a scene kind of guy, volunteering for dozens of set builds over the years.

Still a full-time working architect at 78, Hamilton said there is joy in designing for something that is purely fun.

“When you’re building an architectural project professionally, you have to be careful with codes, you have to be very mindful of what an individual likes, their feelings,” he said.

“There’s a lot of pressure. But when you’re doing things for theater, you’re throwing codes out the window. It’s illusion that you’re after, and just doing anything that comes to your mind.”

Hamilton grew up in Vermont and started his career out of college in 3-D model simulations and highway engineering. His college roommate, David Joy, was from Maine and set Hamilton up with his future wife, Fran, a Lewiston native, on a blind date.

By 1974, they were married, expecting their first child and had decided to make their home in the Twin Cities.

Hamilton said he was introduced to CLT after a company he had formed with Richard Haskell, Design +, was approached about a $35,000 renovation at the Great Falls School in the early 1980s. Still an active school then, CLT had an agreement to use the assembly hall for performances and it needed to grow.

Design + more than doubled the size of the stage and raised it 2 feet so the audience could see better, added sidewalls to better define the space and added a light bar across the ceiling in front of the stage to light the actors. The bar could only be accessed by a 30-foot-long, rolling, library-style ladder.

“You carried the lights up with you, you took extension cords and connected them,” Hamilton said. “You had to go back and forth between lights. There were about 15 lights in those days. Fortunately, nobody ever dropped anything that caused a problem, but it was always a worry, and it was always a concern that anybody might fall.”

He started volunteering at CLT after his son landed a role in “The King and I” at age 9. All three of their children came up through the theater. 

“My role has always been to avoid being on stage,” Hamilton said. In “12 Angry Men,” “I was the judge; you didn’t see me, all you heard was my voice. I think that was one of my biggest speaking roles.”

Instead, he’s worked on about 70 sets, building models and painting, volunteering 20 to 30 hours a week during construction. He’s been president of the theater board and sits on it as a member.

“It was a way to be part of the community,” Hamilton said. “I can’t stress how valuable I think any kind of theater is.”

After CLT started talking last year about replacing the ladder with a catwalk, made possible through a $35,000 gift from Barbara Randall, Hamilton found the best price through a dock-making company.

Cote Crane stored it, gave volunteers space to paint and volunteered time hanging it up, bringing it inside the building in halves and bolting the aluminum catwalk together in the middle.

It was designed to hold two to three people, he said, and to cut in half the time spent hanging lights, in addition to making it less scary.

He envisions future directors getting creative with the catwalk.

“I’m sure there are people who are going to want to have a zip line down to the stage,” Hamilton said. “Snowflakes could fall down from there someday.”

Just as he can’t see himself retiring from work, he cannot see himself retiring from CLT, either.

“If you enjoy what you’re doing, enjoy doing it,” Hamilton said.

He has an 8-year-old granddaughter who “just always is drawing.”

“To her, it’s just play,” Hamilton said, “and that’s exactly what theater is to many people.”

kskelton@sunjournal.com

Community Little Theatre volunteer Bill Hamilton stands on the catwalk that accesses lights at Community Little Theater in Auburn. He was accessing a floating boat dock along the Maine coast when he questioned whether a similar design to the walking bridge would be suitable for a lighting catwalk at CLT. A company that specializes in marine-related walkways was hired to build the catwalk for CLT. It was installed last month. (Daryn Slover/Sun Journal)