ETC announces 2017 ETC LDI Student Sponsorship recipients

Every year since 2000, ETC has provided a unique opportunity for lighting design and stage technology students, sponsoring them to attend the LDI tradeshow. This year, ETC has selected seven recipients of its LDI Student Sponsorship, giving them an all-expense-paid trip to Las Vegas and a full LDI conference pass. The students will get to see the latest entertainment technology, have access to LDI seminars and training, and the opportunity to network with industry professionals at special events. Each Sponsorship recipient will be matched with an industry luminary who will serve as a mentor as the students transition from academics into the working world.

The 2017 recipients of the ETC LDI Student Sponsorship are:

K. Jenna Ferree
A graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, K. Jenna Ferree is earning a master of fine arts in lighting design, and holds a bachelor of fine arts in lighting design and technical theatre from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her lighting design credits include The River, Detroit, and The Pillowman. Jenna has taught lighting design courses at Carnegie Mellon University, Theatre 1 and 2 at Thomas Dale High School in Virginia, and Stage Lighting at Virginia Commonwealth University. In 2013, she was awarded the Richmond Theatre Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Achievement in Lighting Design for Next to Normal.

Tori Mays
Tori Mays is working toward a master of fine arts in lighting design from the University of Arizona, after earning a bachelor of fine arts in theatre design and technology from Rockford University in Illinois in 2016. Her lighting design has been seen on Tigers Be Still and Born Yesterday at the Arizona Repertory Theatre; Disney’s Newsies, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and Footloose at the Surflight Theatre in New Jersey; Dialogue of the Carmelites at the University of Arizona’s Fred Fox School of Music; and Little Shop of Horrors, The Birds, and A Chorus Line at Ohio’s Huron Playhouse.

Nicholas Palatella
In his final year of undergraduate studies at Ithaca College, Nick Palatella is pursuing a bachelor of fine arts in theatrical production arts with a concentration in lighting design. Shows for which he’s designed the lighting include Cendrillon, Winter Bodies and Bald Soprano at Ithaca College; Thank Godfrey at the New York Theatre Festival;and To Hell and Back at the 2015 New York Musical Festival. Nick also worked as the associate lighting designer for Temple of the Souls and I am, I Will, I Do as part of the 2017 New York Musical Theatre Festival. 

Jiajing Qi
One of the international recipients of the ETC LDI Student Sponsorship, Jiajing Qi is originally from China. Currently he’s a graduate lighting design student at the University of Texas at Austin, where he has served as an assistant lighting designer for Little Women and Momentum. From 2011 to 2016, Jiajing worked on television shows for the Zhejiang Radio and Television Group in Hangzhou, China. He held several roles, including lighting programmer, lighting designer, vice director of the lighting department, and studio manager. During the summer of 2017, Jiajing studied at the Stagecraft Institute of Las Vegas. Jiajing is interested in architectural and broadcast lighting.

Brandon H. Rosen
A master of fine arts candidate, Brandon Rosen is currently studying theatrical lighting design at the University of California, San Diego. He earned a bachelor of fine arts in theatre design and technology from Texas State University in 2014. Brandon has designed the lighting for productions, such as What of the Night?, Waiting for Godot, Machinal, and Vieux Carré at UC, San Diego, Machinalia at the JACK performance venue in Brooklyn, New York; and The Bitter Game at The Public Theater in New York. He earned Arena Stage’s Allen Lee Hughes Lighting Fellowship and the 2015 Thomas C. Fichandler Award.

Tim van ‘t Hof
Hailing from the Netherlands, Tim van ‘t Hof is an international ETC LDI Student Sponsorship recipient. He is pursuing a master of fine arts in lighting design from the New York University Tisch School of the Arts. In 2014, he earned a bachelor of theater in technical theatre arts, with a concentration in lighting design, from the Amsterdam School of the Arts. Tim is a resident lighting designer for the Second Avenue Dance Company. His lighting designs have graced stages in Norway, the Netherlands, Ireland, and the U.S., and he was an assistant lighting designer for designers including Hugh Vanstone and Ken Billington.

Gifford Williams
Gifford Williams is working toward a master of fine arts in lighting design from Boston University. He holds a bachelor of arts in theatrical design and production from Fordham University at Lincoln Center. Gifford’s recent lighting design credits include The Fantasticks at the Stonington Opera House in Maine, Chicago for the Peregrine Theatre Ensemble in Massachusetts, Franklin at the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, Emmeline and The Cherry Orchard at Boston University, and Oedipus Rex at the Hope Summer Repertory Theatre in Michigan. He also served as a master electrician at the Stella Adler Studio and New York Stage and Film.