Andrew Keck

Lighting through the Years

Middle and High School

It all started when I was in 6th grade at Sunrise Christian Academy. I started as a spotlight operator for 3 shows. Once 7th grade hit, I was promoted to running a 24 channel dimming board for our small school shows. The school decided to repurpose the building we used as our theater, so we moved into a gym at Sunrise and used it occasionally. We had a stage that we would build during theater season, and strike it so sports practices could resume their practices. Because of the change, our lighting rig was more accessible, so we were able to change it and borrow or rent equipment depending on the show! Because of this, the 24 channel board was no longer useful.

Lighting at Sunrise needed a console that could control dimming conventionals but also control LED lights, so we chose Chamsys MagicQ! This was a great fit for us becuase we paid $15 for a USB to 3-pin DMX cable that would allow us control of the lights in our rig! It had a 5 hour time limit, so we just had to be careful of timing. So we would restart the program before every show!

Sunrise’s spring musical was always performed in a theater that we would rent out. It was great experience for everyone involved! The theater that we rented out the most was Wichita Center for the Performing Arts! This theater was amazing to work in with 2 full catwalks including 48 channels of dimming, 4 electrics including one with linear LED bars to light the cyclorama, as well as many wash lights and LED lights to give the stage color! As an added bonus, the theater had a small stage on both sides of the wings that had dimming channels in the ceiling, it was a great addition to the show and helped with many transitions on stage!

My senior year at Sunrise the production was Hello Dolly! A judge from Music Theater of Wichita (MTW) would come, watch our show and take notes on it. At the end of the school year, MTW would hold an award (Jester Award Program) show for all of the theatrical productions their judges had observed across the state of Kansas that year. Sunrise has received a good amount of nominations across the board, including me! And it turned out that many of us Sunrise nominees won awards. I was privileged to win the 2020 Jester Award for Lighting Design!

College

As I ended high school on a high, I looked forward to college at John Brown University (JBU) in Northwest Arkansas! I applied and was accepted to be on JBU’s Audio Video & Lighting (AVL) work-study!

Through AVL, I learned so much about productions. Not only how lighting works, but how lighting, audio and video can and must work together to support each other in each service, show and production! Because my first year in college was 2020, the covid year, we had a lot of complications to how school worked, but also how AVL would work. While it was quite a bit of work, it was amazing to come in and do “The Gathering”, JBU’s Sunday night, student led worship service. Every Sunday afternoon, AVL would load all of our gear onto this stage built facing a wide open lawn. And every Sunday night after the service, we would strike every single piece of technology and pack it back up into cases to be put inside for the week.

As JBU began to figure out ways to allow shows to be done inside, I got to learn how AVL’s infrastructure was and how to create with the gear they own. This was the 2021 Talent Show, my first event inside at JBU. I co-designed this with another freshman, Andrew Isaac!

As my COVID/Freshman year at JBU continued, I was introduced to our theater, the Berry Performing Arts Center (BPAC). Our regular Tuesday and Thursday chapel services needed to be spread out from our cathedral, so we made our BPAC the secondary venue, because of this, I got the opportunity to run both ProPresenter 7 as well as design lighting looks for the service! The picture above shows the stage full of trees, stage decks, and other pieces getting ready for the production of Into the Woods! It was a fun experience for me because every week that I went in to work the BPAC, scenic design had made more and more progress and I was able to work with the lighting rig that grew as the show neared opening night!

Once the theatrical lighting designer graduated, the reins were handed to me to design for theater! I got the amazing chance to design 3 musical productions and 3 plays while at JBU!

Professionally

As I move forward into “the real world”, I am able to take my passion and hobby and turn it into my full time job! I have accepted a full time position as Events and Rentals Manager at Relevant Audio + Visual in Wichita, Kansas!

I have been a contractor for Relevant Audio + Visual for almost 2 years now! While working for Relevant, I have been able to gain unbelievable knowledge about live events, rentals, and installs!

One of the biggest things that I have learned is the difference between a turnkey system (consoles, lights, network is in place and ready to use with no set up) and an event that is loaded into a venue for a short amount of time. I have learned why even the smallest piece of gear is vital in that system!