Alum in the Spotlight: Samantha Weiser
It’s a rare seventh grader who is able to find the passion that they will turn into an inspiring career. But, that’s exactly what happened to LIHSA Alum Samantha (Sam) Weiser. Sam was a young girl who made her way to a lighting board and is now a well respected Lighting Designer while also serving as one of LIHSA’s beloved artist-in-residence. We are thrilled to put this alum – who usually designs the spotlight – in our spotlight.
Sam grew up in Plainview and attended Plainview-Old Bethpage High School. She began performing in community theater in the fourth grade in Plainview’s Cultural Arts Playhouse (CAP). By seventh grade she still loved the theater, but lost interest in being on stage. She shares, “I saw the tech booth in a corner. You had to climb a ladder to enter it and I knew I wanted to go up and see what’s there.” That’s where Sam first saw a lighting board and it literally lit up her imagination. “I ran spotlight that year and by the summer after seventh grade, I started operating the lighting board. You couldn’t get me away from it.” Sam started doing the lighting design for CAP’s kids shows.
In high school, Sam’s mom suggested she attend a meeting to learn about LIHSA’s lighting design and tech program. “My school didn’t offer opportunities to learn about these,” she says. Sam entered LIHSA for her junior and senior years.
“It was so great to be a student at LIHSA,” shares Sam. “I spent 2 ½ hours a day playing with lights in a theater. It was everything I wanted. I could go and sit in a dark theater and design lights for so much work. I worked on Dance pieces, a “Sweeny Todd” theater piece (which is still one of my favorite lighting designs at LIHSA I’ve done). open houses, my senior thesis. I did a lot of collaborations with the dance department like my senior thesis, a dance piece that I used lighting to emulate art pieces. It was so great and everyone at LIHSA was so supportive.”
Sam spent her senior skip day at LIHSA designing. That year LIHSA presented 27 dance pieces for the Dance Festival and Sam did the lighting design on 21 of them. “It was amazing to have basically unlimited access to the theater and just go in and play with lights. I could just see what it could do.”
When she graduated from LIHSA in 2016, she went to U of Michigan where she got her BFA in Theater Design and Production. Sam shares, “It was great and it was my LIHSA teacher Abbe Gail Gross who really pushed me to go there. She and Debra Dumas made me realize this could be a career path.” At Michigan, she pursued lighting design and worked on a lot of theater.
After graduating Michigan in 2020, Sam worked as a theatrical electrician and received the prestigious Howell Binkley Lighting Fellowship designed to help bridge the gap for young designers between their educational environment and the beginnings of their professional careers. In the fellowship she was the assistant to two lighting designers working on seven shows in three months. Five were regional shows throughout the US and two were international: The Hunchback of Notre Dame in Vienna and Hamilton in Hamburg, Germany.
Since the fellowship, she’s successfully launched her career serving as an Associate Lighting Designer on shows while also pursuing her own freelance Lighting Design work. “As an Associate Designer,” Sam explains, “my job is to make the Lighting Designer’s life easier. I handle the paperwork, drafting the lighting plot, working in tech doing the followspot tracking, getting everything in place so the designer can focus on the show and work with the Director to create.”
For both Associate Design and her own design work, Sam is on the road quite a bit. She’s worked on shows like Mystic Pizza, Frozen, Blackstar: a David Bowie Symphony, and many others in places such as the University of Michigan, Detroit, St. Louis, Nashville, DC, and more locally in New Jersey and LIU.
Since graduation, Sam has kept in close contact with LIHSA, coming back for alumni days every year and eager to give back when she can. Last academic year, (2024-2025), LIHSA invited her to be an Artist-in-Residence for Production and Managerial Arts students. She used the 6 session residency to help teach about the lighting board and how students can think about lights, culminating in designs. She has returned this year (2025-26) to again work with LIHSA students for six sessions. “This year we don’t have access to the theater so we’re learning the basics of lighting design, and learning how to make decisions to make art. We’re analyzing mood and what lighting brings to production.”
Sam lives in Brooklyn and when she’s not working, she runs, and plays rugby for the Brooklyn Hyenas Rugby Team. She’s working to build a rugby youth program in Brooklyn too.
For current and future LIHSA students, Sam encourages them to “Work hard, be hungry, and ask questions. Some kids come to LIHSA not knowing what they want to do. I knew I loved lighting, but came here ready to learn that there’s different paths in theater. There are so many avenues that most people don’t even know exist. At LIHSA, students have 2 ½ hours to focus on theater and theater tech. They should take all the opportunities.”
Thank you, Sam, for shining so much light in the lives of all of us at LIHSA!
