A conversation with Ben Rawson: Lighting designer and KSU alumnus By Kathie Beckett
Rawson’s work seen across Atlanta and coast-to-coast
The Alliance Theatre’s production of “Seize The King.” Photo by Greg Mooney
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ArtsKSU asked alumnus Ben Rawson to talk about his career in lighting design. Originally from New York, raised in Augusta, Georgia, Rawson received his B.A. in Theatre and Performance Studies in spring 2016 with a design concentration in lighting. Interested in the arts from a young age, Rawson became heavily involved in theatre through a technical theatre class in high school and realized that he could build a career working behind the scenes designing for live performance. Since graduation, his lighting design work has been seen in productions for the Atlanta Opera, Alliance Theatre, Glimmerglass Opera, and Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre, to name only a few. He was nominated for a Suzi Bass Award for Outstanding Lighting Design in both 2018 and 2019. ArtsKSU: Why did you choose KSU? Rawson: KSU had a good mix of what I was looking for in both location and program. The location, near Atlanta, gave me the chance to build relationships with companies in the city, work with local professionals who work and teach at KSU, have access to see a variety of professional productions, and the opportunity to work professionally while in school. The program itself offered several productions a season with a smaller number of design students, so there was an opportunity to be able to work sooner and more often than in other programs. ArtsKSU: Did you have any favorite professors or classes? Rawson: A project in my first lighting design course paired us with a student from the Department of Dance; each lighting student was to light one of their student works. It was one of my first experiences diving deeper into the production design world of dance and it really informed my career later as I moved into lighting for various performance disciplines and styles other than theatre. My undergraduate lighting influences include TPS professor Rebecca Makus, lighting designer David Tatu from Dance, and lighting designer Robert Wierzel, a guest lecturer at TPS who brought me into opera lighting.
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