Show dictionary · Rigging & Staging
Rigger
A rigger installs, inspects, and takes responsibility for everything suspended over a production: points, bridles, motors, and the connections between show and structure. Up-riggers work at the steel making points; down-riggers work the floor, building what gets sent up.
In practice
The craft carries formal weight: ETCP certification (arena and theatre disciplines) is the recognized credential in North America, venues and locals require riggers on any call touching points, and the head rigger’s word on a load is the site’s final answer short of an engineer.
The work itself is precise labor in bad places: walking steel, pulling points to plot coordinates, computing bridles on a case lid, re-checking every shackle someone else swears they moused. The culture’s conservatism is the point; everything below a rigger’s work is trusting it.
How you’ll hear it
"Riggers at 6, points by 9, and nothing flies until the head rigger walks the grid."
Related resources
Part of the eventools.io Show Dictionary, a free glossary of live event production terminology.