Expanding the pie is doable. The tricky thing about it is that when you’re talking about expanding the theatrical pie, you have to expand it all – starting from the audience, but then everywhere – all your collaborators, your bosses, the media – they all have to be aligned together and the more you align the more the pie expands.

Talking more about what you do in your work to local people who are interested in you is the start. As you start from that place, you’ll find places where your lighting design skills overlap with the needs of others – the obvious ideas being architecture and interior design, but also just: Looking at and shaping the light in people’s lives. As a computer programmer used to the most persnickety of hardware – the light board – you also have an opportunity to help people with an impatience for technology to learn to use it holistically in their lives.

I’ve been working on a similar mind-shift along with a group of theater artists in Chicago right now – I think as long as I’ve been blogging, but it’s starting to pay dividends now. I think we’re changing a lot of things, all at once (at least three companies, and about four individuals who are all leaving day jobs and following creative work – in this economy. To be honest? We’re going to not only be happier but we’ll be making more money this way.) It works because we’re doing it together, and we’re taking the whole landscape of creative work in and responding creatively to that establishment scarcity mentality when we encounter it: http://nikku.net/blog/maintenance/

In the words of Rahm Emanuel: “Never waste a good crisis.”

It is the mindset change that sets all of this in motion. I’m thrilled to see what you come up with, and I hope you find a group of like-minded folk who can keep you at it.