Emily Stanton is a Senior at North Lincoln High School and has established herself as a talented lighting designer both at the High School and the local community.  What separates Emily from other High School Lighting Designers is that she has truly built the program from the ground up, and is the first (and only) student lighting designer/programmer/technician in the history of the school.  

In the 20 years of North Lincoln High School's existence, it has established itself as one of the best Arts schools for performance with numerous awards in both Drama and Music.  The one area that was lacking, however, was theatrical lighting production and design.  North Lincoln High School has not had a theatrical production (lighting and sound) program.  Although the drama department has been staging award winning productions, the lighting had been reduced to a simple “all lights on/all lights off” type of design.      

Over the years, the lighting system had fallen into disrepair and the school was left with just over a dozen working lighting fixtures, no inventory of cable or accessories, and numerous dimming channels that were out of service.  For a stage that is considered quite large (boasting a nearly 60’ Proscenium), there simply were not enough fixtures to even begin to light the stage.  

Emily decided to make the restoration of the lighting systems her goal.  She sought the help of local technicians that agreed to volunteer at the High School to repair the system.  She contacted theaters, churches, and parent donors and has worked to acquire additional lighting equipment for the school.  Receiving donations of pallets of used and broken lighting fixtures from other venues, Emily learned how to disassemble and repair many types of conventional lighting fixtures, assembling an inventory of well maintained instruments that any designer would be proud to use.  The current inventory that Emily has been able to acquire consists of more than 60 ETC Source Four Pars, 48 ETC Source Four Ellipsoidals, 16 6” and 8” fresnels, a large collection of lenses and accessories, and over 100 pieces of cable.  Once this was finished, she started working on modernizing the system, and has installed the first LED lighting at the school.   

Along with working at North Lincoln High School, Emily is the Lighting Designer at The Green Room Community Theater, where she has designed shows such Legally Blonde and Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors. She has gained a lot of real world experience and loves working with the other designer!