As a young person with an undergraduate degree, launching a lighting design career is a difficult proposition. You have no credits to your name and your academic record doesn't carry the weight of a graduate degree. I had the good fortune to receive excellent professional training in the context of summer stock opera and theatre. While attending Simpson College, where I graduated in 1988, I was able to work with the Des Moines Metro Opera where I worked as an electrician, and then as master electrician, doing three productions each summer in rotating rep over five seasons.
After graduation I moved to Kansas City, returning to DMMO for
two more summers as Assistant Lighting Designer to Martin Ross.
During those two years I worked in Kansas City at the American
Heartland and Missouri Repertory Theatres in the roles electrician,
follow spot operator and lightboard operator. As master electrician
at the American Heartland I had the opportunity to become very
familiar with that theatre's lighting system and was hired to
do my first three professional designs there in 1990, and three
more in 1991. The American Heartland is a 430 seat for-profit
theatre that produces comedies, mysteries and musical reviews.
In 1991 I spent my summer working as Lighting Designer at Timber
Lake Playhouse in Mount Caroll, Illinois. TLP is low budget summer
stock theatre, where you do 7 shows over the course of 14 weeks.
You don't do any ground breaking designs there, but you do learn
to work fast and turn out shows. I went back for the summer of
1992.
In the autumn of 1992 I took a full season position as running
crew electrician at The Missouri Repertory Theatre. Among other
things, my responsibilities included focusing lights and running
lightboard during rehearsals and performances. In that position
I had the opportunity to watch nationally recognized designers
at work, and then to examine their work by watching it repeatedly
during the run of each production. I worked at MRT for three seasons.
In 1994 I began designing lighting at the Unicorn Theatre. The
Unicorn is a 200 seat not-for-profit theatre in Kansas City that
focuses on doing current off-broadway and regional dramas. That
year I was also hired to update Joe Appelt's lighting for MRT's
production of A Christmas Carol.
After the 1994-95 season I gave up my job at MRT and took a position
as Resident Technician at the American Heartland in order to make
my schedule more flexible so that I could design more there and
at the Unicorn. In 1995 I began designing at First Stage Milwaukee,
one of the nations 10 largest children's theatres. And in 1995
I was hired by MRT to create new lighting for the production of
A Christmas Carol that I had updated the year before.
At the end of 1996 I resigned as Resident Tech at AHT and spent
a couple of years freelancing "fulltime". You can't
work in Kansas City theatre and just be a Lighting Designer,
so I filled out my schedule doing such things as working as a
special event technician at AHT, working as a dresser at Starlight
Theatre, and creating props and special effects for AHT and The
Unicorn
In 1999 I took my current positions as Technical Director and Resident Lighting Designer at AHT.
In the coming years I want to begin working regionally more often, while remaining a resident of Kansas City. My professional designs form a solid foundation of experience that I hope will enable me to begin finding more opportunities as a freelance designer outside of the Kansas City area.