10/08/2026
At Theatre USA, we’re proud to give our students opportunities to bring their classroom learning to life through hands-on design experiences! This semester, we’re exploring new approaches to our technical teams, giving even more students the chance to get involved in the creative process and gain real-world production experience.
In DRA 331 Lighting Design, students have been exploring how light, shadow, color, and direction can help tell a story onstage.
Alex Allen served as the Student Lighting Design Lead for A Year with Frog and Toad, putting those skills into practice while developing the lighting concept for the production.
Take a look at Alex’s creative process, along with some of the exciting work our lighting design students have been creating in class this semester!
"Alex Allen is a BFA student with a passion for theatrical lighting and visual storytelling. As Lighting Designer for A Year with Frog and Toad, Alex’s concept focused on using light to establish the changing seasons, time of day, and weather throughout the story. Each season was given its own color palette, from the soft pastels of spring to the bolder reds and oranges of fall. Sunrises and sunsets were also shaped by changing colors, while nighttime scenes used blues and purples with a single c*c light creating the moon.
Lighting effects helped bring the world to life beyond simply establishing the environment. Movement effects created the sensation of traveling downhill, while lightning and rain effects added to the weather throughout the show. Gobos created falling leaves and snow, and individually timed LED effects helped bring the rain to life. Alex’s goal was to make the lighting an active part of the storytelling, using color, movement, and texture to help the audience experience the changing world alongside Frog and Toad."
