Colleen Albrecht

Lighting Designer & Photographer

Colleen Albrecht is a lighting designer and photographer living in Northeast Ohio.  She has designed lighting locally, nationally, and on tour for over twenty years.  Her work has been seen on Cleveland area stages for companies such as convergence-continuum, Cleveland Opera, Playhouse Square, Great Lakes Theater, Cleveland Metropolitan School District, Cuyahoga Community College, Cleveland Institute of Music Opera Theatre, Beck Center, The Fine Arts Association, Heights Youth Theatre, True North Cultural Arts, Magnificat, Baldwin Wallace University, Cleveland State University, Cain Park, and Karamu House.

As resident designer at Karamu House, she designed Sassy Mamas, Simply Simone, Fences, A Day of Absence, Black Nativity 2018 through present, Twenty-seven Wagons Full of Cotton, This Property is Condemned, The Velocity of Autumn, Aida, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, The Mountaintop, Red Summer, and Clyde’s, along with several concerts, events, and arts education productions.  She has also designed the All-City Musical productions with Cleveland Metropolitan School District All-City Arts at the Ohio Theatre at Playhouse Square since 2008, including In the HeightsUrinetown (canceled by covid 19,) 42nd Street, Bring It On, The Wiz, Kiss Me Kate, Memphis, Rent, Aida, Footloose, Bubbling Brown Sugar, Fame, A Decade of Dreams, and Dreamgirls.  As resident designer at PCPA Pacific Conservatory Theatre on California’s central coast, she designed The Chalk Circle, The Man Who Came to Dinner, Kiss Me Kate, Urinetown, The Sound of Music, Othello, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.  While resident designer at convergence-continuum, she designed lights for Hot ‘n’ Throbbing, Tales of the Lost Formicans, Poona the F*ckdog and Other Plays for Children, Icarus, Demon Baby, Mr. Marmalade, Freakshow, Finn in the Underworld, Ouroboros, Kimberly Akimbo, The Museum Play, Milk Milk Lemonade, and Sordid Lives.  Early in her career, she traveled with smooth jazz artist Keiko Matsui for two years, lighting her world tour U.S. dates, and lit Cyndi Lauper in concert at the Lakewood Civic Auditorium.  She was also the resident assistant lighting designer for Cleveland Opera for many years, including productions of Tosca, The Magic Flute, Carmen, Iolanthe, Coronation of Poppea, The Tales of Hoffmann, Don Giovanni, Sweeney Todd, Faust, Madame Butterfly, Eugene Onegin, Elixer of Love, Romeo and Juliette, Turandot, and Lucia di Lammermoor.

Ms. Albrecht has taught lighting design and technology and stage management at Kent State University, PCPA Pacific Conservatory Theatre, Lake Erie College, Cuyahoga Community College, and Cleveland area high schools.  She obtained her BFA in production design and technology from Ohio University and her MFA in drama in lighting design from the University of California, Irvine.