Theatre Arts alum joins industry elite with 2025 Thea Award

Central Washington University Theatre Arts graduate Joe Wilbur (’07) reached the pinnacle of his profession earlier this year when he and his colleagues from TechMDinc received a Thea Award from the Themed Entertainment Association.

Wilbur describes the annual Thea Awards as one of the most prestigious honors presented to themed entertainment industry professionals. Disney, Universal Studios, Six Flags, and other high-end theme parks around the world have been competing for top honors since the contest began in 1994.

TechMDinc has been lauded for its work at previous Thea Awards presentations, but Wilbur explained that it’s always memorable to be recognized by your peers.

“This is the only pure themed entertainment award, so there’s definitely some prestige that goes with that,” said Wilbur, a principal at the Burbank, California-based multimedia design company. “I’ve been lucky to have worked on several award-receiving projects, including the Shanghai Disneyland project that received Outstanding Achievement for a Theme Park in 2017. But it’s always a special feeling to see your work honored.”

Wilbur and his team received the 2025 Thea Award for Outstanding Achievement for Immersive Show/Hotel Lobby Transformation for their work on “The Legend of Luna: A Great Wolf Story.” The recently released show premiered in the lobbies of four newly opened Great Wolf Lodge properties, while a slimmed-down version of the immersive experience opened at three other resort locations.

TechMDinc was asked to join the “The Legend of Luna” project in 2021 by BRC Imagination Arts, the creative producer working with Great Wolf Resorts.

“We all worked together to bring the show to life over the past couple of years, and it has been very well-received by the guests,” Wilbur said, adding that he and his family got to travel to Texas, Florida, and Connecticut last summer to participate in pre-openings for the show at two Great Wolf Lodge locations.

Wilbur has been at TechMDinc since he completed his Master of Fine Arts in sound design at the University of California-Irvine in 2010, joining the company as an engineering intern that summer and working his way up to principal in 2017.

He currently works remotely from East Wenatchee and manages the company’s engineering department. Although he still travels a lot, he couldn’t be happier with the way things have worked out. With a 3-year-old son at home, it’s been nice to stay close to family.

“I feel super blessed that working remotely has worked out so well,” Wilbur said. “COVID helped convince my boss that it would be doable, and we’ve been able to make it work ever since.”

Strong Foundation

Looking back on the past 18 years, Wilbur’s career has turned out to be everything he could have dreamed of after graduating from CWU with a BA in Theatre Design and Technology, specializing in sound design.

He went directly to California the next fall and before he completed his master’s degree at UC-Irvine, he landed an internship with his current company. That turned into a seven-year stint as an engineer and he eventually moved into a leadership role at TechMDinc eight years ago.

Wilbur isn’t doing much sound design anymore, but he’s still deeply involved in the creative process.

“I haven’t done much with content — things like sound effects or scores — in a number of years, but I’m still very fulfilled creatively by the work I get to do every day,” he said.

In a way, Wilbur and his team are charged with predicting the future.

“What I do at TechMDinc is more system design; envisioning what systems might look like a few years down the road,” he said. “We create the tools and palettes that designers will need when they come into a space and execute the art.”

While he has come a long way in his career, Wilbur still looks back on his time in Ellensburg as being pivotal in his development.

Among the highlights, he said he benefited greatly from the one-on-one attention he received from the CWU faculty. He also got to try his hand at a wide variety of theater-related jobs, including — but not limited to — production, set design, set construction, technical leads (i.e., sound mixing and design), carpentry, costume construction, and publicity.

“My CWU experience is what set me up for success later in my career,” said Wilbur, who transferred from Wenatchee Valley College after two years. “I was afforded so many amazing opportunities as an undergrad that you just don’t get at larger schools.”

Upon arriving in Ellensburg in the fall of 2004, he was already working on his first sound design project after only one month on campus. He kept taking on more and more before taking the world by storm during his “super senior” year.

“That year, I sound-designed four productions and was the master carpenter on six,” Wilbur said, recalling one production, Blankity Blank, in which he served as the sound designer, master carpenter, and technical director.

“We performed that one for the Kennedy Center American Theatre Festival in the Milo Smith Tower Theatre, and to this day, it was one of my favorite experiences of all time,” he added.

Now that Wilbur has found his groove as a professional multimedia design engineer, he wants current students to know that they can follow a similar path.

“If you want to get hands-on experience in a lot of different areas, Central is the place to go,” he said. “Their faculty really cares about your success, and their guidance benefited me tremendously.”