Alex Koontz sits at his desk in the technician booth of Nappanee’s Round Barn Theater, headset on and ready to go. Koontz is the lighting director, creating light design and operating the tech that makes it possible for each performance. Photo provided by Alex Koontz.

WARSAW — Alex Koontz came into his career almost by chance.

Koontz is a Warsaw native and attended Warsaw Community High School. A longtime band kid, he was unsure what he wanted to do for a career until a friend got him interested in taking a theater technology class with her.

“On a whim, I decided to take the class and found myself working follow spot for ‘The Addams Family,’ when Warsaw did that. I just loved it. I loved the energy, I just loved the environment, being up high in the spot booth … I decided that was something I wanted to try and pursue doing full time,” Koontz recalled.

Koontz went on to work follow spotlight for WCHS’ production of “Mary Poppins” and did his first official lighting design on 2018’s spring play, “Somewhere Else Dreams.” He attended Huntington University, where he studied theater technology, He now works as the lighting director and carpenter for Nappanee’s Round Barn Theater.

A typical day at the theater depends on where they’re at in the production process. While building a show, Koontz goes through the script with the director and decides on lighting cues. A lot of different factors go into lighting decisions, Koontz explained, “What colors to use, how we’re going to bring out certain areas of the stage and keep others dim, how are we going to isolate people. I’ll go through and build cues, each environment, each scene, each moment where the lights need to change from one to the other.”

Once that’s done, Koontz programs the lighting design into his computer in the technician booth, hangs lights, and prepares to run his part of the show. He also has a hand in set construction, cutting wood and putting pieces together based on that show’s scenic design.

Koontz brings his own style to the art of lighting design.

“I tend to try and make my lights flow and change with the music, and I’m very beat oriented. I feel like part of it comes from my background in band and percussion, but part of it also comes with the fact that I was trained at Huntington in a worship setting. I had to design for chapels. … Worship music and the ebbs and flows and swells of that was very informative to how I was designing my lights,” he explained.

Once a show opens, Koontz runs the lighting program for each performance and is always on the lookout for anything that could go wrong.

He considers theater a very rewarding field to work in.

“It’s getting to be a part of something bigger than myself,” he said. “When we’ve had a really good show, when everything’s gone right, when the audience was really into it, and we can tell that they enjoyed it — it’s that feeling of satisfaction. We’ve done something for our community. … No matter how big a crowd is or how small a crowd is, there’s always going to be at least one person who walks away from the performance feeling better.”

Of course, it comes with its own frustrations, as well.

“We do struggle with the limitations of our equipment and trying to do theater, ultimately, in what was a found space. It’s literally a barn. So, trying to mix sound and shoot light in a barn, it can be challenging. All of that circles around to it then being rewarding whenever it does work,” Koontz said.

Koontz counts a college production of “Silent Sky,” a play about 19th- century astronomer, Henrietta Leavitt, as one of his favorite lighting designs.

“We were able to rent this big black curtain that had fiber optics in it so that it looked like stars. I was able to program that into the show,” he recalled.

The shows that allow Koontz to flex creatively tend to be the ones he enjoys the most.

“A director that I know and that trusts me to make those creative choices is also a big part of it,” he added.

Apart from his work, Koontz enjoys cross stitch, home improvement projects and playing video games with friends.