ABOUT - Lighting Design

The MFA Lighting Design Program at UMKC is a three year, 60 credit hour course of study. The focus of the lighting design program is to train the student to enter the profession prepared to work at the highest level. Training consists of a highly rigorous blend of academic course work and a demanding design and production schedule. Within the Performing Arts on the UMKC campus, the lighting program supports seven MFA and two undergraduate productions, three operas productions and five dance concerts with the Conservatory of Music, and six professional productions with the Kansas City Repertory Theatre. Students will design two-three productions each year and serve on crew for over twenty.

In the first two tears of study, lighting students will take four semesters of Professional Lighting Design, two semesters of Rendering, four semesters of Theatre History, one of Text Analysis, one semester of CAD drafting, Collaboration, and Lighting Equipment. Residency and design are the key components of the third year. Students are encouraged to spend at least a semester in their third year off-campus assisting professional designers in other cities.

In the past lighting students have assisted Ken Billington on the Radio City Music Hall’s Christmas Show, "Stars on Ice" TV Special and at the Houston Grand Opera; Mary Jo Dondlinger at the Boston Ballet; Dawn Chiang at the Arizona Theatre and Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Russell Champa at the American conservatory Theatre, to name a few. Students will assist lighting designers at Kansas City Repertory Theatre, such as Don Holder, Phil Monat, Dawn Chiang, Nancy Schertler, Jackie Manassee, Richard Nelson, Jeff Davis, Rita Pietraszek, John McLain and others. For designs while in residency, students can work at Kansas City area Equity theatres or do second stage designs for regional theatres.

The lighting program has been honored in two successive years with the most prestigious award available for a lighting student: in 2000, Kazuko Oguma received the Helmsley Lighting Internship at Lincoln Center to work with the New York City Opera and the New York City Ballet; in 2001, James Primm received the same internship, a highly competitive award that supports only one recent lighting graduate for a year in New York.