Amanda Jensen
Light is crafty, it shifts and slips, it can speed up time or stop it completely. It can make the ugly beautiful and the beautiful ugly. It can define time or place or it can completely redefine space. To design lighting is to create living water colors but unlike a painting, lighting design for theatre allows for movement. Light allows you to sculpt scenes, shifting and sliding through shadow and light, crafting perfect transitions and looks. This is what I find fascinating about the design element I choose to work with.
I grew up in a small town in the Finger Lakes region of New York state. My parents were terrified that I had chosen to devote my life to building a career in theatre. I attended Hartwick College in Oneonta NY and in 2006, received a BA in theatre arts with a concentration in Technical Theatre and Design. In 2007, after completing my lighting and audio residency at Long Wharf Theatre I moved to Philadelphia PA, and found my home. Being from a small town and moving to a large city has helped me grow as a person, it has opened my mind to see that there are so many stories that need to be told and this openness has influenced my approach to theatre and design greatly.
In college my professor, Ken Golden, used to say “Theatre is someone standing in the light, telling someone sitting in the dark, what it is to be human.” This has stuck with me through my career and continues to influence how I look at each new project. I believe that art is how we tell the story of our humanness and theatre is how we can connect and change others by confronting our humanness together through storytelling.
The Philadelphia theatre community is vibrant and active and giving and unafraid to challenge it’s artists and audiences. I am so lucky to be a part of it. It is in Philadelphia that I met my mentor Thom Weaver. Thom has supported and guided me in many ways and without his assistance, I wouldn’t be the artist I am today. Soon, I hope to be able to do what Thom did for me by bringing on an assistant in the near future and passing down the knowledge that was passed on to me.
