At the beginning of my junior year, I enrolled in Honors Physics at my High School.  As part of the class, each student would be required to complete a large-scale project on a topic of our choice.  We were required to present our project to a group of county administrators, teachers, parents, and students before winter exams. I decided to do my project on theater lighting.

I wanted my project to be hands-on and allow those that attended the presentation to be able to see the effects that lighting can have on a scene.  My project consisted of a large matte black rectangular box that would block ambient light and allow the attendees to create their own lighting scene.  With the use of magnets and magnetic strips, I installed birdies – 2 front crosses and 2 backcrosses gelled pink and blue – as my conventional fixtures.  In the top, I drilled a large hole and put an LED fixture as a top light. The 4 birdies were attached to a dimmer pack which was then connected to a mini DMX controlled board. The LED was also connected to the board in RGB. 

During this presentation, participants could create a design as I explained the basic ideas of lighting design. Along with this, I also set up two poster boards.  One poster featured pictures of previous designs that I had done so that I could describe how design worked in a real show.  The other had the science of how the theater lighting works. I discussed how dimming worked and how, when you press a button on the board, a light turns on. Along with the poster boards, I had multiple different “props” that I could use to help people understand my project. I brought a fresnel and a leko to show what real lights looked like, along with a gel book and gobos. 

The presentation was during the school day and set up like a science fair. All of the science classes came to the presentation room along with school board members and science teachers from other schools. Many students in other classes loved using the interactive part of my project and loved seeing their own designs come to life in real-time. Members of the school board were very impressed with the thoroughness of my research. Many of them stayed after the presentation to discuss North Lincoln’s auditorium and what I did there. I ended up seeing many of the school board members at my next show. 

The following semester, we started to ask for permission for upgrades to the auditorium, including purchasing LED lighting and replacing the very outdated dimmer rack.  The school board members and school administrators have been very supportive of the theatre department and we are working on implementing the changes right now.