Hello - my son is currently a junior and is very interested in pursuing lighting design as a career. We are from the north suburbs of Chicago. He has a 3.95 GPA and a 32 on the ACT, with a 36 on the ACT Writing. He is also interested in Information Science, and would like to go somewhere where he could at least take some information technology courses, if not double major. So far, he has identified the following options:
Illinois
Michigan
Purdue
Rutgers
NYU
Syracuse
Any suggestions?
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You live on the North Shore so it would seem that an obvious choice to investigate would be Northwestern - I know they have an MFA in stage design and someone’s got to be doing the lighting for their many productions. If nothing else, it’s worth a phone call or a visit.
You’ve got one of the nation’s leading college theater departments in your backyard and while they are known for the acting and musical theater component, they aren’t doing it without the full support of a technical crew.
A friend of D was a gifted lighting designer in HS and attended University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music for a BFA in Lighting Design. Of all of her performing art HS friends, he is earning the most post-college and has a great career.
It is a reach, but investigate Carnegie Mellon. Not positive they have what he needs, but take a look.
Give Tait Towers (1 717 626 9571) a call and ask for their recommendations. The people at Tait are great, and I’m sure they can give you a good direction. I believe one of the founders was a CMU grad.
From their website:
TAIT designs, constructs & delivers the finest live equipment in the world. With the company employing a passionate team of experts in manufacturing, engineering, design, technology and innovation, all of whom understand set and stage creation in its entirety.
Founded in Lititz, Pennsylvania, in 1978, Tait has expanded globally with offices around the world. It is the World Market Leader in staging, scenic design, kinetic architecture, LED integration, show control and automated rigging.
Boasting a workforce of more than 600 employees, Tait approaches projects with a philosophy that the spectacle of the opening night is equally important as a quick, safe and efficient load-out.
Among its claims to fame, Tait supplies the staging for nineteen of the top twenty highest grossing artist tours including The Rolling Stones, Taylor Swift and Madonna. TAIT also supplied LED integration and customization for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the 2014 Winter Sochi Olympics, engineered and fabricated the Las Vegas’ Omnia Nightclub Chandelier, and was the production specialist that partnered with US space agency, NASA, to put the lyrics of U2’s ‘Beautiful Day’ into orbit.
The son of friends went to Carnegie Mellon to do theater tech, and wound up as a lighting design person. He has been supporting himself – and supporting himself very, very nicely – since about a year before he graduated, working all over the world.
I will say, based on the experience of the kid at Carnegie Mellon, and of several other friends of my kids at NYU - Tisch and USC Film School: Even if a student is going to a university (like CMU) with a world-class computer science department, a conservatory-type theater tech program does not leave any open space in one’s schedule for taking elective courses elsewhere in the university. You could do that in a non-conservatory, liberal arts program like Northwestern’s, but not in the conservatory programs. And if you are serious about doing lighting design as a career, and you can get accepted to a top conservatory program, I think you will be far better off than with any of the nonconservatory programs.
Emerson
Would he be applying to the Theater BFA programs at NYU, Rutgers, et al, or to the regular Arts & Sciences colleges where he would have more academic flexibility (and where admissions is based on academic profile more than on talent portfolio)?
Information Science plus Lighting Design? Have him check out http://www.vectorworks.net/ They might like him a lot if he finishes a program that has a lot of both of those.
If he looks at BA/BS theater programs rather than BFAs, it’s likely he will have more flexibility in his schedule to pick up the other courses he wants. Fortunately, while there are scads of theater programs out there, there aren’t all that many places that offer a lighting design major or even a lighting concentration. So have him run a couple of searches for that with the various college-matching search engines. Then he can look at the places on that list to see whether or not they also offer the other possible major.
He’s spoken with his school advisors, and, right now, is interested in a more academic track.
Would he possibly consider Michigan Tech? It is tiny, but might be worth reviewing. They have a BS program in theatre as well as the tech programs. Check out the info on the sound guys during the winter festival. The issues my kid had with the school might be positives for someone else - lots of snow and skiing for the winter. We are more southern so that volume of snow is scary! We were looking for engineering so no research on the veracity of the program. Just surprised me when I ran into the theatre aspect.
Does SUNY Purchase still have technical theater? They did back in the dark ages.
@jenallev1 DePaul has an incredible lighting design program. It’s also a conservatory and quite selective and small. Students are incredibly marketable after school. (My daughter is a costume design major there)