Crafting Stories in The Dark

While being a lighting designer isn’t necessarily a “character” in the story of a show, I like to think of the design as an element to further the subtext behind a show in order to tell the story with those onstage. In several instances, I have been able to design the lighting, pass it off to someone else to run during performances, and also perform onstage. Coming from a background of performing since I was little, I always love doing the character study for each show before sitting down to program the show and understand the motion of the show to create interesting, intentional cues and transitions for a performance. With budgets and equipment being limited, I have been forced to be more creative with my solutions to creating intriguing stories with light for audiences to easily follow along. They might not automatically make a connection of color theory, timing delays, auto-follows, intensity, etc, it constantly adds a deeper, professional edge to a performance.