San Diego State University School of Theatre, Film and Television produced Zombie Prom as part of their 2007-2008 season of plays and musicals. The production served as my thesis lighting design project for a Master's of Fine Arts degree. This report documents my process of creating the lighting design from initial readings of the script to finalizing cue sequences on stage. Zombie Prom is a colorful example of musical parody set in an exaggerated world of a nineteen-fifties American high school. I approached the lighting with two worlds to create; the normal world of Enrico Fermi High School and the heightened environment of a musical parody of horror and atomic science fiction. Lighting was able to support the dramatic shifts to musical theatre numbers and supernatural phenomena by first establishing a recognizably normal world for the play. The primary reason people attend the theatre is to see and hear the actors tell a story. My role as lighting designer was primarily to make the actors visible for the audience. The lighting design was conceived and executed as a part of the production team. I was fortunate to be part of a healthy collaboration of design and staging artists. It was important for me to create a lighting design that would not draw attention to itself and work within the overall production design. There were opportunities for lighting to burst out with color and kinetic movement just as there were moments of crisp simplicity. This report conveys examples of the design process presented with my reflective commentary.
