I wander into the ADC clubroom on a normal, quiet Sunday afternoon for an interview with the most indispensible person in the ADC: the techie. I find my interviewee much busier than I had anticipated. “This’ll have to be a short one” he apologises. “There’s a show needs a set done by Tuesday, and I’ve been asked to do it.” “How long ago was this?” I ask, bewildered. “This morning.”

This is Stuart Moore, or Stumo. He is the techie extraordinaire, and as I found out that afternoon, a man constantly in demand whenever technical expertise is required at a moment’s notice. His face in the scene-dock is always a sign that a big-scale show, be it panto, opera or musical, will be in safe technical hands – it is possible that no one knows the ADC better than he.

He is now finally approaching his PhD, the fourth degree he’s had at Cambridge, so it seems a good time to look back at his decade in Cambridge theatre, a record that makes the most seasoned third year actor look like an ingénue to the ADC. “It’s good to have something to spend time on something outside academia, so the theatre scene here was a big incentive to do all my degrees here as opposed to elsewhere”, he says. And for techies you need people who have more institutional memory than three years – “you need people who have made mistakes, and by this time I’ve made all the mistakes I needed to.”

Does the endless cycle of new techies get irritating? “It’s frustrating when friends move on, but actually I enjoy training up new people, seeing people who’ve done big things and knowing you were involved with their first shows, that’s really satisfying.” Unlike acting, you have to rely on senior people to teach techies the tricks of the trade. But we actors always find time to get angry with techies when something goes wrong, expecting them to get everything right. While the actors get a month to rehearse, the techies’ involvement is from midnight Saturday through to 7.45pm on Tuesday and sometimes it turns out someone has bitten off more than they can chew. “But then, if we didn’t take risks, we wouldn’t end up with some of the fantastic stuff we’ve had.”

Why do people want to be techies then, given the grindingly long hours, and the lack of public recognition? “Being a techie is all about being part of a team. Whereas actors are directly competing with their friends, you can never have too many techies – there’s always a role for people who want to help. You’re all in it together.”

Very rarely will a reviewer notice the tech elements though. They might compliment the lighting, but you wouldn’t catch someone saying that the hundred sound cues were impressively handled. “Tech can’t make a bad play good. And we will only get noticed when we get things wrong.” This makes me feel a little guilty for being an actor, but he reminds me that techies do actually enjoy what they do, or they wouldn’t do it.

Despite the love given to him by directors for his extreme versatility – his Camdram lists him as a set designer, lighting designer, technical director, “technical star”, “cosmic cut-out expert” and, worryingly, “leg engineer” for last year’s panto – he claims he “isn’t that good”. “There’s plenty of good people out there – and we can always do with more techies.”

He once found himself having to to fold and unfold a priate during a performance as the wings didn’t fit, which could have severely damaged exiting actors if he wasn’t quick enough. “Part of being a techie is fixing things, whatever they are, wading in with power tools or going out for pizza for a cast that has been going far too long.” And has the decade of theatre been worth it? “You’d be amazed what it can do for you. A friend of mine had a first in maths, wasn’t getting any job interviews, started putting the techie stuff on the CV and got three job offers straightaway. ”

I leave him to his set-building, thinking the scene-dock will be a strange place without him.