Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Nita Mendoza. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Nita, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?

I would rephrase the question “What did your parents do right?” to “Did your parents ever put their egos aside and listen to their tiny human?” When my sister, Miriam, and I were in high school, we both expressed a dedicated interest in pursuing a creative career and I know at that moment, my parents’ stomachs dropped when they first heard that. They wanted stability and security for us, and since we didn’t know much about opportunities in that field at the time, they trusted that this is what and where we belonged: in the creative arts. Even though they couldn’t really understand what a lighting designer and a stage manager do, they made an effort to be involved in our worlds. My parents were the best cheerleaders because they both had full time jobs at the time, and they chose stay up until 3am to help us in any way they could. Both my parents would usually start their days around 5:30am, and yet, they wanted to be there: encouraging us to keep going despite how tired we were.

I can gratefully say that despite the differences and arguments we all had growing up, they never discouraged me from being an artist. Instead, they would offer advice and say that it is never too late to switch careers, if that was something that I wanted to do. They saw how tired theatre made us and sometimes, the projects became overwhelming to the point when you can’t really see an end goal anymore: you feel yourself drowning. Whenever I get to that point in a project, I picture my mom telling that despite how everything must feel right now, all the confusing chaos, I need to keep moving and that that project will get done. Despite it all, it will get done.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Maria Elena Mendoza, but I go by Nita, and I am a chicana lighting designer based out of Los Angeles. I tend to favor designing for theatre, but I am grateful for having been given the opportunities to design for musicals, theme parks, themed entertainment, dance, opera, and I am very excited to see what other paths I can venture down on.

In high school, I put my foot down and made the decision that I wanted to pursue *something* in art. However, every other month was a different interest in what field of art I wanted pursue. I would go from wanting to be a photographer one week to graphic design to painting, etc. but what is interesting… was that I never looked into a career in theatre. By the time I was a senior, I had become very active in the drama club, but for some reason, I never saw it as a career that was achievable. I have no idea why, but I just thought it wasn’t an option? I don’t know, I was a whack kid back then, ha! Art school was stupid expensive and since they were primarily private institutions, their funding opportunities didn’t excite me. Just like the majority of the youth, I didn’t know what I wanted to do! BECAUSE I WANTED TO DO EVERYTHING!!! AAAHHHH!! It wasn’t until a family friend shared a TEDx with me. On the talk, Elizabeth Gilbert was explaining the difference between “jackhammer”, passionate folks and the “hummingbird”, passionate folks who move from flower to flower: just moving around. I wanted to do it all; but I wanted to find the one thing that I can call one of my ‘passions’.

Even though I did theatre in high school, I don’t start counting my career until I entered undergrad in 2013. I attended the University of Texas at El Paso, and there, I met some of the most fundamental people that still play an active role in my life. I collaborated with other students who helped lay down the foundations of why I design the way I design, style wise. I faced personal challenges that forced me to grow up. Wild to think about where/when you started compared to where you are now. So cool, huh?

Artistically, the thing I took away from my undergrad career was to be bold. My mentor at UTEP, Hideaki Tsutsui, told me that I had the eye for design, but the problem was was that I wasn’t being bold enough. Bold? What heck did that mean? That night, with that critique in mind, I felt it. I felt my heart beat faster when I realized that I was painting with light. My palms started to sweat when I noticed choices needed to have intentions. I was expressing my reaction to a play and communicating those emotions with lights. Compositions got more bold and slowly, I was walking down this path of wanting to be a lighting designer and I needed to learn more.

I have no idea why some people look down on people who went to grad school for theatre. “You don’t need a masters to do…”, like. I get it, people! But we each have our own unique reasons on why grad school was in our path. Sheesh, people! One of the many reasons why I wanted to pursue grad school was because I had no idea how to present my work, or how to communicate concepts with collaborators. Sure, we can all pull together a collage and talk about concepts, but talking about light required more than just inspiration collages. It required a process, and I wanted to learn that process so I can develop a process that worked for me.

Not saying that each and every day was sunshine and lollipops in grad school, no no no. There were several instances that made me want to swear off lighting design, but I kept on circling back to wanting to do lighting design. If I ever told you in the past that lighting design wasn’t for me, ignore past Nita! She was foolish! I love doing what I do and I want to keep going down this path.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

For me, the most rewarding moment as a lighting designer is sitting with the audience and hearing their reactions. It’s *especially* rewarding when a giant plot point is revealed and you just hear their *GASPS* roar throughout the venue! Or sometimes, you’re seeing a moment on stage that hits close to home, and you feel like every word that is being said is directly said to you. Then you realize everyone around you watching that *same* moment and with that shared experience, it becomes unique and sacred to that shared moment. It’s a pretty gnarly experience.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

The amount of work it takes to put into a single production (and art in general) is something I don’t think many non-creative folk will ever understand. And how many people it takes to build these worlds. In theatre specifically, I feel grateful when you hear them acknowledge the work and hear the usual phrases like, “a lot of work must have gone into that!” but, at the same time, it confuses me when people also say, “I could have done that in half the time…” or whatever other dumb things they feel like they have to say. I wish non-theatre folk could witness and experience the process from the beginning. It’s all magic.

Your work being ephemeral is a whole other level of emotion non-creatives will struggle to understand. It’s just amazing to see this world being built right in front of you. The countless meetings, the endless email chains, the long tech weekends, and you see it finally come alive. And when you see the final product, wow! You can finally let out that long “I survived tech week” sigh.
Then the show closes, and it’s gone. It’s beautiful.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.nitamemdesigns.com/

Image Credits
Credit on images themselves