CTC Spotlight: Lighting Director Craig Gottschalk
There are three reasons why Craig Gottschalk works as Children Theatre Company’s lighting director: a whim, a choice, and an illness. Originally from the Pittsburgh area, Gottschalk has a “weird evolution” for how he found himself in the Twin Cities and, really, a career in theatre at all.
Having grown up singing in a choir, Gottschalk was encouraged by a high school friend to audition for the spring musical — Singin’ in the Rain — if only to “join the ensemble, goof off, and have a ton of fun.” “I ended up cast as Cosmo Brown, one of the principle leads! I have no idea why I was cast. Maybe because I was tall, lanky, and goofy?” Unsurprisingly, Gottschalk loved working on the production, and not just because of being on stage. “Until that point, I didn’t really have a voice in high school — theatre was a way to express myself in a way I never had before. There was something euphoric about being on stage and telling someone else’s story. I guess I got bit by the bug right away and never really let go, making theatre a part of my life from there on out.”
Gottschalk stayed close to home for undergrad, initially pursuing a major in biology. By his freshmen spring, he’d dropped biology and picked up theatre. “My parents flipped out and told me I couldn’t be just a theatre major, so I added chemistry — which I later dropped to a minor,” he recalls. During his undergrad years, he did everything — worked on lights, sound, hang, focusing, scenery, and acted onstage. “During that time, I gained a huge appreciation for technical theatre and realized I wanted to move more into that field.” A few years later, Gottschalk began an M.A./Ph.D. program in Ohio, only to realize shortly thereafter that he didn’t want to teach theatre: he wanted to do it.
“During my graduate apprenticeship, I worked part time in the scene shop and lighting shop. Because I had shown interest in lighting while working in those shops, I was approached to design lights for a show for one of the theatre department’s productions. I was asked to design because the student who was supposed to be the lighting designer had to leave school due to a severe illness. If that hadn’t happened, I don’t think I would have ever designed a production,” he reveals. “After that, I designed another production the following year. I would obsess for months about what I was going to do for that show and was filled with a kind of excitement I had never experienced before.” That excitement eventually brought him to Minnesota, where he went to graduate school at the University of Minnesota for Lighting Design and then landed at CTC as the assistant lighting supervisor in 2007.
After a stint in Wisconsin working for the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Gottschalk returned to the Twin Cities as CTC’s lighting director in 2013 — the position he formerly worked underneath as an assistant. Since then, Gottschalk has seen CTC through five seasons: each with unique designs and challenges. He occasionally designs lighting for CTC shows, but his main job is to act as lighting director, making sure everything goes according to plan and schedule throughout the show process. A typical load-in for Gottschalk takes days, he says. “The first day is just the lights. We bring in all the line-sets, hang the lights, gel them, put in any patterns, and try to get everything over the stage out of the way so scenery can move in the next day.” Not only does Gottschalk oversee this massive undertaking (several times a season), but he has to plan his crews and schedules an entire season in advance — all while working on multiple productions simultaneously.
“Throughout the season, I’m usually working on three productions at once — teching one, rehearsing another, and preparing for a third show. Not only that, but I’m the contact for other CTC events, like local graduations on the UnitedHealth Group stage and the annual Curtain Call Ball.”
Even being that busy, Gottschalk has to have an eye for details and a creative mindset to solve some of the biggest — and tiniest — lighting challenges, from a massive scoreboard (over ten feet long and color-changing for The Abominables) to a tiny firefly (The Last Firefly). For The Last Firefly, Gottschalk, along with lighting designer Paul Whitaker and CTC’s Master Electrician David Horn, had to create a special, programmed mini-chip controller that flickered, dimmed, and was small enough for an actor to hold in their hand as a lightning bug.
That wasn’t even his biggest triumph for the show, which features Gottschalk’s favorite and most rewarding collaboration yet — a suit of armor. Working cross-departmentally with costumes to design a glowing, overlapping metal plates that the character, Lightning, could fight in, has proved to be the lighting department’s most innovative work at CTC yet. According to Gottschalk, “The actor had to do a lot of fight choreography without putting too much stress on the wiring we had integrated into the armor. It took a lot of planning and actual labor, especially because she also had a lightning-bolt-shaped staff made of the same materials!” He continues, “Lights are always reactionary to the set and costume designers: being lighting director means working through all logistics on and off-stage — just like with Lightning’s costume.”
As for working as both lighting designer and lighting director, Gottschalk admits that his job is more complex now than when he first started. Technology has vastly improved: LEDs, multimedia integration, projectors, and moving spotlights are only a few of the advances since Gottschalk began designing in college. He’s glad that companies have gotten smarter about the technical needs for the theatrical community, moving towards designing products for theatres and not just rock-and-roll-style concert venues. “We reap the benefits of advancements in Chicago and NYC,” he says. “Every advancement is another tool in the toolbox that becomes more present and important as we use them.”
Although Gottschalk freelances as a lighting designer when not running all things lighting at CTC, his home is here. He says, “We are training empathy in the next generation of people. From an institutional standpoint, there is no place like CTC. Nowhere else puts such a high value on young people.” Gottschalk especially values that his young children enjoy CTC’s shows and that they, too, are valued as part of the CTC family. He embraces CTC’s message, hitting home the point that, “Here, children are well-respected, they have a voice, they are empowered, they have a story to tell, and that story is important.”
— Article written by Victoria Rabuse
