In The Spotlight: Senior Nora Alferman reflects on her job as the lights crew chief

After six hours of programming lights and refocusing light fixtures in the theater, lights crew chief and senior Nora Alferman finally gets to go home — a normal Saturday for her. 

Alferman has been the lights crew chief since her second semester of freshman year, though that hadn’t always been her ambition.

“My freshman year I auditioned for someone’s Frequent Friday and she and I became pretty close and she told me I should come with her to one of her work days,” Alferman said. “Then I started doing more work days and then she asked me to do spotlights for the musical, which was crazy as a freshman.”

After that Alferman fell in love with doing lights, so much so, she decided to shift her focus from on to off-stage.

“I kept learning and really fell in love with lights,” Alferman said. “I didn’t go into high school planning to do lights, but it just kind of happened.”

Alferman took that passion and ended up applying for a higher position a year later.

“I really [liked] spotlights,” Alferman said. “I ended up applying for crew chief the spring season of my freshman year.”

As crew chief, Alferman has been a part of four musicals — “Godspell”, “Wedding Singer”, “Crazy for You” and “Spongebob”, doing spotlights for two of them.

“It was kind of scary [being crew chief as a freshman] but I wasn’t doing a ton of work,” Alferman said. “I was still working under the guidance of Mr. Defeo, but it was my freshman year when COVID- 19 shut everything down, so I was only the lights and crew chief for a couple of months.”

She is working on lights for the upcoming musical, “Spongebob”, where she has put in ample effort, staying after school until 5 p.m. most days and until 7 p.m. during tech week, racking up more than 80 hours on the job since August.

“I really spend a lot of time on it,” Alferman said. “I love it, and I’m so glad that I ended up in that zone even though I didn’t intend to be. I absolutely have no regrets.”