I currently attend the University of Houston, in Houston, TX and I am majoring in Electrical Engineering with a computer option. I am also planning to either double major or get a minor in business. At UH I am effectively starting freshman year over with taking all first-year classes due to going to Emerson last year. While I'm here I'm working on getting this website current (it doesn't include much from Emerson and I need to finish stuff from high school), surviving relearning math and avidly playing minecraft. I plan to join the Bowling team, robotics club and IEEE once I can do so.
I became interested in Theater and more specifically stage lighting, when I was about 5. My stepmother had to literally drag me to a summer theatre camp. I told her over and over that I was going to hate it, and that I didn't want to go. In heindsight, I'm really glad that she didn't listen. While on our tour of the theatre space we went up to the booth, and there I saw the light board and said to my self, "that's what I want to do with my life." The rest, as they say, is history.
From the time I was 5 until I was 11, 6 years, I went to this same camp, which was specifically for acting. For the last two years, however, I had gotten to know the camp director, and she let me do tech, with the last year being from conception to construction to running of the design (scenic, lighting and sound).
While in seventh and eighth grade I fully participated in my junior high's theatre company, earning well over 100 Junior Thespian points designing and working many theatrical shows and shows for the school's choir, band and orchestra. For many of these shows my eighth grade year, I designed, programmed, and ran complex light shows choreographed to the music, usually for choir, as they had recorded music that could be linked via MIDI to the light board to ensure exact timing on light cues.
In addition to working many shows for the choir, band, and orchestra I designed lighting and was light crew head for School House Rock Live, Jr., The Attempted Murder of Peggy Sweetwater, and Aladdan Jr.; I was also Asst. Stage Manager for The Emperor's New Clothes.
My final act in junior high was to be technical director for the end-of-the-year tallent show. For this I had many responsibilities, including assigning crew member jobs, scheduling rehearsals and performances (with approval of the director), chaos control of about 40 6th through 8th graders, and acting as Stage Manager for the three performances. I also programmed many light sequences for certain acts in the show.
Throughout high school I was very active my high school's theater department. I was involved in every production from my sophmore year on that I was eligable for. This included productions such as Jekyll & Hyde, The Crucible, Daughters of Atreus and Throughly Modern Millie. More about them can been seen on my theater work page.
While I was in high school I was also a PAC Assistant which involved being part of a team of students that worked the various band, orchestra, chior and other events that came into our space. We had to oversee and do, usually on a very short time table a coherient design and production for whoever was renting the space. Usually for this I ran the lighting however I also had much experience doing audio, stage management and flying.
My senior year I was given the opportunity to hold the title of V.P. of Production. This position was essencially the head PAC Asst. and also was required to participate in all theater events/productions. Part of this (although not a required part) was that I created a PAC Manual detailing the specifications of the space and filled with detailed instructions on how everything in the space does, or should, operate. It included things such as a crash course in the lighting sound and video control boards and the SM console as well as flying instructions, warnings and the like. The last major component of the book was including listings of where all the various hookups for things (i.e. audio/lighting inputs/outputs, ethernet hookups, intercom connections, etc.) were and what they did as well as what all of the random things I had learned over the years (such as what switches did what, how certain things needed to be done, etc.). Additionally in my senior year I started volunteering at the Hobby Center as an usher to see more shows and to give back to theater.
The year after my senior year of high school I went to Emerson College in Boston, MA planning to major in lighting design. While there I worked on many stage and TV productions, both student groups and department shows. Some of these included The 30th Annual EVVY Awards, Crumble (Lay Me Down Justin Timberlake), and The Golden Age among others. As the year came to a close, and especially when I went to USITT that year I realized that while I love doing theater, I really missed working with technology and computers. The more I thought about it, the more I decided that theater was, for me, more of a hobby rather than a career. This gave rise to my transferrance to the University of Houston (because Emerson is primarely a liberal arts college) where I am now majoring in Electrical Enginnering
Now that I am back in Houston I am once again volunteering at the Hobby Center (and plan to also at the Alley Theater) and plan to continue to do some community/school theater on the side, although it is no longer my main focus. Additionally I'll probably be going back to my high school to help them out with focuses or large special events if needed. My final plans are to work for a lighting manufacturer as an engineer, combining my passions of computers, engineering and theater.
I started out making websites when I was very young with the help of my dad. I've since learned HTML, CSS, XML, PHP, CGI/Perl, and some of SQL, and JavaScript. I've also built many websites and taken a class in Web Mastering in which I learned Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Flash.
