I was recently contacted by a highschool student interested in a career in lighting design asking for advice. Below is the email I sent in reply.
Hillary,How great you have discovered a field you love so much! As for what to expect, everyone’s experience is so different I would not really know where to start. As for how to best prepare, I can offer some advice based on my own experience.
I assume you are planning on attending college to study lighting further before jumping into the professional world. If not, I would strongly encourage that. While there, do not just study lighting and theatre. Be sure that the program you are accepted into offers more than just the performing arts and take full advantage of that. I would shy away from a conservatory program and opt for a more general liberal arts program with a good theatre department. After college, if you feel the need to specialize further, there is always graduate school.
My knowledge of lighting, while useful and necessary, is only strong because of my knowledge of art, history, politics, philosophy, literature, science, religion, architecture, music and so forth. When lighting a Moliere play it is ultimately more important to know(to some degree) French history, literature, art and the language itself than it is to know how a leko works or the difference between “tracking” and “cue only.”
Expose yourself to as many different ideas in as many different fields and disciplines as you can. French culture is useful for Moliere, but science is useful for Copenhagen and math for Proof. Not that you need to be an expert in any of these, but a basic working knowledge of ideas, concepts and historical currents will help discussions with directors. It will deepen your understanding of the text and allow you to make better insights as a designer. You do not need to be a PhD in philosophy to light a Tom Stoppard play, but a basic understanding of western metaphysics certainly helps getting your brain around Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
See as much performance as possible. Theatre, dance, opera, music. See things that you love. But also see things that you hate. Why do you love(or hate) that particular piece? You will work on shows you do not like at some point. Make peace with that and find something enjoyable with them. Expose yourself to new and different ideas intellectually and artistically. You will not understand(or like) everything you see, but you can still appreciate it. And you might surprise yourself!
Go to museums.
Read books.
Read the newspaper.
Stage manage. This is a difficult and often tedious job that is infinitely valuable to a lighting designer. This is especially true of dance where the lighting designer often calls the show as well.
Get a camera and take pictures. There is nothing better than studying natural light if you want to make artificial light.
Find a professional theatre and work load-in, focus and strike for as many shows as you can. Observe how the different designers focus the lights. Then watch the shows and see how they are put together. If you can’t do this during the school year, there are many summer stock options available.
Make friends and have a full social life. Theatre is all about relationships and psychology and emotions. The only way to learn it is to live it.
I hope this helps. Good luck! It is an exciting path to walk down.
Peace,
-L
Lucas Benjaminh Krech
Lighting Design
www.lucaskrech.com“Dancers live in light like fish live in water”
~Jean Rosenthal
