Students at Signal Mountain Middle/High School are seeing theater in a new light.
The school recently installed a long-awaited new lighting system in the theater with assistance from Mountain Education Foundation Executive Director Mike Taylor.
“He [Taylor] made it happen,” SMMHS Theatre Department head John Lennon said of the new $45,000-$50,000 lighting system. “The community has been overly generous. The lighting affects everything we do, from costumes to makeup to set design.”
Student Shehan McFadden said the new lights now allow the theater department to put on actual stage plays.
“There’s a lot more versatility as to where we position ourselves onstage,” she said.
McFadden added that the theater department no longer has to rent lights, which cost around $1,200-$1,500 per performance, and now has more money for other things.
“We don’t have to do heavy lines with makeup anymore,” said student Sarah Procious, explaining that the lights now highlight the face instead of the top of the head.
While the new lights are a vast improvement, they are just a skeletal structure at this point, Lennon noted.
“We don’t have enough instruments,” he said.
McFadden said the theater needs more ellipsoidal (spot) lights and more wash lights.
“We need more of everything we have,” said Lennon.
The community will have a chance to see the new lighting in action when the theater department presents the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Next to Normal” May 1-4.