For a student rarely featured in the spotlight, Kristen “Kiki” Mead certainly knows how to use one.

The sophomore theatre and sociology and anthropology double major has, at the tender age of nineteen, served as a light operator for four Anderson main stage productions, master electrician for Topsy Turvy Mouse and most recently as the manual light board operator for The Lesson. As a lighting technician, Kristen said, “I have the power!”

And what power she wields. The new Anderson Theatre lighting system, installed just prior to this t academic year, nearly quadrupled the power available in previous productions. This made Kristen’s job as master electrician quite challenging.

“Normally,” Kristen said, “a show needs about eighty or ninety lights; Topsy Turvy Mouse took 150.” Kristen was in charge of hanging and focusing all 150, some weighing close to forty pounds.

Yet this Mankato West High School graduate considers it all in a day’s work. To Kristen, 10 hours per week in the scene shop is normal, including the 30 additional hours during the last two weeks of a show, commonly known as “Tech Week.” After the last performance of any production, the cast and crew must also “strike,” or dismantle, the scenery and take down the lights. This made Topsy Turvy Mouse, with its sizable set and vast array of lighting, quite the challenge. Kristen recalls strike lasting until about 2:30 a.m.

But Kristen has considered technical theatre her passion since her senior year of high school, after she took Theatre Appreciation as a Post Secondary Enrollment Option student at Minnesota State University-Mankato. She has also been a part of backstage crews, acted onstage and even played in the orchestra pit for her favorite show, Les Misérables.

This passion for theatre inspired Kristen, Senior Dana Rabe, Gustaus Alumni Michael Rueckert and Adjunct Advisor Terena Wilkens to open a Gustavus chapter of the United States Institute of Theatre Technology (USITT) last year, which is open to all students who are interested. This spring, she and fellow members will be traveling to a national USITT conference in Cincinnati, Ohio. The week-long event attracts fellow theatre designers from across the country and provides opportunities to share portfolios and network.

Despite her  dedication to technical theatre, Kristen is no one-trick pony. Her talents and interests are diverse and numerous. When not behind the lighting board or running around in black backstage, Kristen can be spotted in the Gustavus Woodwind Choir—she has played clarinet since sixth grade and viola since fifth.

Kristen clearly manages her time well, which may explain why, upon arriving at college last fall, she helped restart the Gustavus Juggling Club.

“She started it last year without even knowing how to juggle, so I think that’s awesome,” said Sophomore Physics Major Annie Kleinschmidt, Juggling Club co-president. “She constantly gets friends to come to learn to juggle and have fun. And she brings such an energy to a room as soon as she enters; it’s hard not to want to be her friend.”

The club now maintains a solid group of regular jugglers and unicyclers, as well as St. Peter community members. “It’s my life—theatre, juggling and trying to find time to sleep,” Kristen said.

But sleeping won’t be on Kristen’s agenda anytime soon. Barely a week and a half after wrapping up The Lesson, she has already begun work as the assistant lighting designer for the January Interim play, The Other Shore. Responsibilities will include researching the playwright, identifying themes of the show based on critical analysis of the work and creating a lighting concept that works with the set. She is also enrolled in the play’s month-long puppet making class, which will design and build the puppets used in the final production. After The Other Shore wraps up in February, Kristen will begin her stage managing duties for the spring comedy, The Impresario.

Kristen claims to enjoy the pressure, and with an impish grin she hints that bigger projects loom on her horizon. “I’d love to do a set design before I graduate,” she said. Considering that she plans to graduate a semester early, such aspirations would be enough to overwhelm most students.

But as we have seen, this student’s got the power.