Lighting Design
Various lighting looks from class, a lighting mockup for "Heaven, Iowa" by Fall Out Boy, stills from Miscast Gala 2025, and lighting design from Soundings: Music of the Spheres.
These first two lighting looks are inspired by the stained-glass piece from Tiffany Studios, "Autumn Landscape". We were asked to create contrasting pieces, one that was synonymous with the art piece, and one that evoked the opposite feeling. The top left is most similar to the waterfalls and foliage of the vibrant stained glass, almost seeming to glow from within, and teeming with life. The bottom right is stark, unmoving, and a little imposing with the backlight and shadows being a central focus.
With the next project, we were asked to tell a story through movement in two looks. This is the first of them. I was trying to convey a tragic vampire love story- where the vampire ultimately outlives their partner. Hyper specific, I know, but in a production setting, my lighting would serve to augment the choices made by the rest of the design team in costumes, set, and props.
"Heaven Iowa" Concert Lighting
For our final project, we were given free rein to design lights for any song we wanted, with a minimum of 30 seconds. Naturally, I did an almost 2 minute cut.
“Heaven, Iowa” to me means bittersweet love. This song is the epitome of two people as magnets, but the polarity will always push them apart. It’s loving someone, knowing you can’t have them, and wanting to be in their life anyway. When I close my eyes and imagine this song I see a foggy morning, an old car on the Mulholland overlook, and a screw top bottle of wine. It makes me feel hopeful.
Ultimately, I chose this song for our lighting project because of how dynamic it is. The verse, chorus, and bridge are all so thematically different from each other that it offered a lot of room to experiment. Practically, I knew right away that I wanted to use the bunch of circles gobo on the Intimidator spot because it was the closest thing I was going to be able to get to starlight in the grid we have set up. The colors were the next things I chose. I knew I wanted mainly blues to represent the coolness of morning and night, but I also wanted a pale yellow to represent the weak sun. The aquamarine gel was probably my favorite just because it was such an interesting contrast and seemed to convey the exact emotion of the song.
The pacing and cueing structure was a bit of touch and go at first. The beginning and end of the song are both similar in that they have slower fade cues, where I wanted the middle chorus bit to be very quick and syncopated. Some of my favorite parts of the cue timing are the drums right before the chorus when I synced the lights up to them, and the bridge when I synced the lights dimmer to the lyrics ‘shake things up’ and ‘down’. The overall result wasn’t exactly concert-light-esque, I was going for the vibe of if this song was in a jukebox musical, this is how I would light it.
"Heaven Iowa" // Lighting Mock-Up
Kiana Brumbaugh in "Michael in the Bathroom".
This was a fun act to light because there was the potential for a lot of swift light changes and moments in the instrumentation and singing to augment with lighting. I ended up going with neon blue/magenta colors to accent Kiana's green shirt elements and evoke the old TV buffering color barcodes.
Miscast Gala 2025
My first time designing lights for full songs was with Students' Stage for their 2025 Miscast Gala. This show presented unique challenges because each act was directed by a different person, and they sometimes did not communicate their lighting needs. I found myself having to adapt to pages of new cues given to me right as tech week began. Ultimately, we pulled it off, and I learned the importance of setting boundaries in collaboration.
Ella Marchal & Emma Bowman in "The Princess Bride".
I love The Princess Bride, and I love the sword fight scene between Inigo and Westley. I knew it would be a challenge to portray the grey and beige tones of the cliffs of insanity from inside the very black Blackbox theater, but I was able to work with the director for the scenes and come up with a good color scheme. Mostly pale yellows with a bit of texture, a hint of indigo in the corner for the cliffs, and no changes throughout the fight. For a static look, I think I did very well with the limited plot I had available!
April J Clark in "Epic 3"
Hadestown is my all-time favorite musical, and I jumped at the chance to design lights for one of the songs when I got the chance. My originally ambitious design included string lights, electric lights, or even just ensemble members coming out with their phone flashlights on. the director vetoed all of these ideas (for good reason). The final looks are still stunning, blending my original idea of the soft yellow illumination of electric string lights with the deeper indigo tones of a southern night. Magenta was used as an accent to imbue the whole song with a feeling of nostalgia and sunset- of the end of a long day into the coolness of the night.
Soundings: Music of the Spheres (2026)
Soundings: Music of the Spheres
Soundings: Music of the Spheres is a student-produced immersive concert and dance experience put on by the Cal Poly Music Department every year in partnership with the Performing Arts Center in San Luis Obispo. This year the theme was "music of the spheres", interpreted to mean celestial bodies, stars, planets, or any otherworldly experiences. The purpose of the concert is for students to gain hands-on skills in the world of live entertainment, from stage management, run crew, lighting design, videography, sound and lighting operation. Not to mention the show is also student written and composed!
Pluto's Promenade
Written by Neil Bedagkar,
Ro Cumber, and
Millicent Harrison
Due to my previous experience in theatrical lighting design, I was put on the lighting team for this show. our two-person team had two days to program and fine tune all the cues for the second half of the show before the tech run through and invited preview night. I am especially proud of the eleven unique cues I created for Pluto's Promenade, the longest song in the show at thirteen minutes!
Overall, this was a highly engaging and collaborative process, between focusing lights, discussing cues, and working with the performers, musicians, and dancers to ensure that they were all adequately lit for each song. I hope to design lights for more shows in the near future!