About Me:
Hello! I am a theatre major at Georgia Southern University focusing on design, tech, and management, especially stage management and lighting design.
In my four years at Georgia Southern I’ve stage managed three shows, worked on seven in total, and received my first professional theatre job. In my first semester of college I was thrown into the deep end as an assistant stage manager for Ghostlighting, a world premiere about a haunted theatre. As the ASM I was in charge of checking all of the special effects for the show before the run began, which taught me to really understand the tools I need for a show so that when something breaks I understand how to diagnose and solve the problem. More recently, as stage manager for Detroit ‘67, this trait was pivotal when a scene change needed to be adapted to clean up some spilled water. Since I understood the scene changes so well, I knew exactly how to get the spill cleaned during the next scene change while barely slowing it down.
Detroit ‘67 really tested another skill I have: how to effectively solve problems. After our first day of tech, our campus closed for over a week because of Hurricane Helene and we even had to push back our opening show. During this time I did my best to communicate with my cast, crew, and design team despite the unreliable internet in order to make sure that everyone was okay and then to help the cast get together before we were able to officially come back in order to ensure that everyone kept their lines fresh in their heads. Additionally, through a combination of the hurricane and general life difficulties, almost half of the technical crew of the show had to drop from the production, but since I had been careful to document what each crew member was in charge of, it was easy to have a new person join our team. Despite the challenges, thanks to the effort from the entire team behind Detroit ‘67, we were able to come back strong and have a fantastic run of the show!
Since working on these shows I've gotten to continue my journey of stage management, as well as start learning about lighting design. When I started my lighting design work I leaned on the strong technical skills I built as a stage manager, but I very quickly had to learn to think as an artist first and trust my ability to make my ideas come true. Since I began working as a lighting designer I have designed 4 shows, and worked on many shows in other, related, positions.
- Noah Checketts