Lighting design found Maaz Ahmed in middle school, and it found them by accident.
“I was walking down the hallway, and the choir teacher poked his head out of a door to ask me if I wanted to run lights for the school musical,” Ahmed says. “I had some friends working on it, so I said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ It was an excuse to be out of the house.”
It didn’t take long before Ahmed was hooked.
“I distinctly remember that feeling of satisfaction after doing my first show,” they say. “I got bitten by the bug and that’s the way it’s been ever since.”
Ahmed, who graduated from Marquette in 2022 as a double major in digital media and theatre arts, is now an accomplished lighting designer based in Milwaukee. They have directed lighting for well over a dozen shows and are now a lighting design fellow on “Bug,” their first Broadway show.
In a Q&A with Marquette Today, Ahmed provides an insight into what life is like as a lighting designer.
What led you to Marquette?
I didn’t really know what kind of education I wanted. I didn’t know whether I wanted a Bachelor of Fine Arts or a Bachelor of Arts, but I knew I needed to be in a place where I could do a lot. It was between Marquette and Michigan when I was applying, and Marquette just seemed like the right fit.
What does a lighting designer do?
The lighting designer is responsible for creating the atmosphere for a play. I describe them as the cinematographers of theatre. We have a lot of control over where the audience’s attention goes — the equivalent of shot composition. When are we in tight focus? What color are we putting on the stage? How are we shaping the atmosphere so that the audience is experiencing each moment the way the director intends?
Describe your process for figuring out how to light a show.
I probably get contracted anywhere from two to eight months before a show starts. I will begin by reading the script a couple times and having multiple conversations with the director, just to make sure we are on the same page creatively.
After that, I’ll get architectural drawings of the theatre and start working in computer-aided design software to figure out where my lighting instruments are going to go. I need to use a lot of math to figure out, well, if I put a light here and it’s at this beam angle, is that going to work for what we need? And then multiply that thought process by however many lights you need to do a show. My light plots tend to have anywhere from 100 to 250 lights, depending on the size of the inventory and the type of play.
Then I get to do the creative part, which is programming the lights, figuring out what colors we’re going to do, and how long we’re taking for lighting changes to happen. It’s a multi-stage process.
Do you have any shows that you were particularly proud to work on?
I did a production of “The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity,” which is a wrestling play. It was particularly challenging because of the scale we were trying to do. We were essentially producing a WWE show in a 120-seat, warehouse-like space. And it really turned out to be quite beautiful, but it was a challenge for sure.
Another show I did in that space was a hyper-realist production where they put a ceiling over the stage. Now the place where I’m supposed to hang my lights is blocked by a giant ceiling. I got really into the engineering to figure out how I could make it work.
How was Marquette Theatre integral in your development as an artist?
What I was able to get at Marquette that wasn’t at other institutions was a sense of freedom. I didn’t come into Marquette as a lighting designer; it wasn’t until sophomore year that I decided on it as my concentration. I was studying lighting design but also got to act and direct. That really showed me the entire process in a way that informs my lighting design practice to this day.
What’s a piece of advice you would have for current or prospective theatre students?
If you have an idea for a project or an experience that you want to have on your resume, you have to be the one to make it happen. The theatre program is what you make of it. If you’ve concluded that you want to do theatre professionally, you have to give it your all, and that’s what will lay the groundwork for a career in this business.
