With our Parnelli NextGen series, we profile up-and-coming live event professionals who have been making their mark on the industry. All are in the running for the “NextGen of the Year” Parnelli honor, which will be announced at the 21st Parnelli Awards ceremony on April 14, 2023.
For a 20-something whose ink is barely dry on her MFA in Lighting Design & Technology, Nina Agelvis has already had a rich and varied career. She’s been an electrician, a stagehand, a drafter, a lighting designer, a teacher, and, while she’s shy about it, also plays the harp. She’s worked in repertory theaters, live music clubs, the corporate world, and on a cruise ship. Her work has taken her from California to Ohio, Alaska to Arkansas, and now New York. She’s fluent in English, Spanish, Mandarin, and Taiwanese—oh, and for good measure, she also has a Class C Driver’s License, so sure, she can even drive a truck to the gig.
Discovering Theater, Discovering Lighting
Agelvis was born in Taiwan in 1996, and when she was seven, her parents took her to an orchestra concert. Out of all the instruments the child could be drawn to, she was drawn to the harp. She took lessons and while she became good and performed in high school, she didn’t pursue it—though it would pursue her. In undergrad, when a sound designer got wind that she played, they put her stage to play the Paraguayan harp in a production of Plumas Negras. “Music itself has helped what I do now, especially working in nightclubs,” she says. “Music and dance have helped me evoke emotions while lighting.”
In 2008, at 12, her family moved to Southern California. She landed at St. Mark’s Lutheran School in Hacienda Heights, where she got involved with theater primarily because she “knew theater was a place I could make friends.” Her first show was Annie, where she worked as a stagehand. But then she gravitated toward lighting in high school, cozying up to an old ETC Expression console with floppy disk drive and all. “At that moment I thought it was the coolest thing earth, but then the school upgraded to the ETC Element—and wow!” She had found her passion and was inspired to continue in lighting, especially when she understood she could respond and even provoke audience reactions depending on what she does at the board. “That’s why I love nightclubs and live music—the lighting can help drive the emotions of the moment.”
After high school, she attended the University of California Irvine receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Drama, with honors in lighting design. Because her mother was here on an E2 business visa, during her sophomore year she had to jump through some hoops to receive international student status. “It was tricky to navigate because as an international student, you could only get a job that related to your major, and then you could work only 20 hours a week during the school and 40 during summer.” Help came in the form of Lois Bryan at the South Coast Repertory theater company in Costa Mesa, who took a chance at hiring Agelvis as an electrician ensuring her stay.
Next, she went to the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, receiving a Master of Fine Arts in Lighting Design & Technology. “I continued my student journey and made a lot of connections there,” she says. While in grad school she taught Vectorworks and 3D modeling for two years, and once out, that drafting work was her most feasible gig. “But I knew I wanted to more lighting.”
Clubs, Theaters, and a Ship
While in Ohio, she worked regularly at Lori’s Roadhouse, a 24,000 square-foot live music venue with two stages. There she lit live bands on the fly—cover and country bands. It gave her a solid basis in working with live music. Then Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines called, and there she was on a two-week cruise around the Caribbean. It was her first time on a cruise ship let alone working on one, and she was hired to train others to run the rig for the many shows on board, including Christmas and ice shows. And as the shows were “pretty much 24/7,” she had to squeeze in an hour here and there to train. “It was really a quick and dirty way of teaching.” She soon realized that some of those she was training hadn’t done any design work, so she ended up taking the lead. “They were just making everything green and red, composition-wise. So I was not only teaching them to run the gear, I was also teaching them design.” But thinking back, she is glad she did. It allowed her to return to teaching and learn how to program lights on a cruise ship. “I also got to use my Spanish, though obviously some of the technical terms were challenging.”
In late 2021/early 2022, she went to Juneau, AK, to be the lighting designer for the Perseverance Theater’s production of The Brothers Paranormal. After that, she went to the Arkansas Repertory Theatre in Little Rock working on a production of School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play for two weeks as the associate lighting designer for lighting designer Rachael Blackwell. Then in May and June, she found herself in New York, where she worked on behalf of the Sovereign Candle Collective in venues such as the Ziegfeld Ballroom and the World Trade Center in various capacities. “I also worked for the Summer Concerts at the Hudson Yards and am currently lighting dance and EDM clubs like the PUBLIC Hotel’s club The Roof, Deluxx Fluxx, and Le Poisson Rouge.” During this time, she did get a taste of what working for a touring act would be like when she subbed for friend Mike Cueto, lighting designer for lovelytheband. “I went and listened to their music on YouTube, had two hours to program, and then I did their concert at Cornell University.”
Corporate by Day, Clubs by Night
Her “day gig” now is working as a lighting specialist for Google through First Agency, an event company that supplies labor. “This means I’m in charge of programming and setting up lighting looks for all their events in their two main stages at the New York campus at Pier 57,” she says. She’s running an MA Lighting grandMA3 running MA2 software on the larger stage and an ETC Ion Xe on the smaller one. She relishes the corporate scene as it sharpens her skills and provides experience. While she got to “bust out the club skills” at corporate Christmas parties, she is still enjoying and learning from the work. “It’s cool because everyone on the production team brings different experiences, and whatever curve balls are thrown, we’re able to deal with it.” Meanwhile, at night, she lights those clubs. “So yes, it’s basically corporate by day, nightclubs by night!”
While she is doing remarkably well and has an impressive and growing resume, she is of course contemplating her next move. “I definitely want to go back into freelancing, though I’ll probably do corporate work for another five years to see what that involves,” she says. “I have never done touring work, and that has intrigued me and that is the one aspect that I have yet to experience.” Future goals might be designing a club or getting a permanent position in Las Vegas. She is sure of one thing: “I like to challenge myself with scope and scale, and that’s why touring is appealing; but otherwise as long as I have the opportunity to do lighting work with music, that is what feels the best. That moment when there is a sudden blackout, and the audience is waiting for the lights to come back on, and when I do that, it’s great. You end up jamming with the band with lights, and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of that. The benefit is it’s really a creative process.”
