Jenny Bauer: Making Everything Shine

Jenny Bauer travels back and forth between Missouri and Wisconsin each year, but seems to always find herself back at the Racine Theatre Guild. A freelance theatre technician and lighting designer, her first official gig at RTG was hanging, focusing, repairing, and cleaning lights while she was a student at Union Grove High School.

“”I started volunteering at RTG when I was 14 and have been designing lights there since I was 17,” Jenny shared. “One of things I love about volunteering at RTG is that I just get to play with lights and anything else I can get my hands on”

While she was attending and after she graduated from UW-Parkside, she designed lights for multiple shows at RTG including Grease (2019), On Golden Pond (2020), Akeelah and the Bee (2022), Clue: On Stage (2022), Into the Woods (2022), Drop Dead! (2022), Perfect Wedding (2023), The Tin Woman (2023), Stand and Deliver (2023), Dial M for Murder (2024), Stargirl (2024), Over the River and Through the Woods (2025), Always A Bridesmaid (2025), and Legally Blonde (2025). She will also be designing lights for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in December.

“One of my favorite challenges on a show at the RTG was when I designed lights for Clue. I was able to light the Clue gameboard as though the characters were the pawn on the board, and the lights followed them as they moved.”

Jenny has also served as a mentor to newer lighting designers and volunteers at RTG, showing them more about programming tricks and working with instruments.

“I’m also lucky enough to be able to share the theatre space with my theatre family, most of them I have been around since I was 14 and they still remember me as the very excited young girl who loved to climb in the grid and always wanted to help despite being very shy. Throughout the years I have gotten the chance to help integrate new lighting and projection technology into the theatre. Often I’m a very willing guinea pig for the new equipment”

At Parkside, she served as master electrician and light designer for multiple shows including Indecent, The Thanksgiving Play, The Penelopiad, The Glass Menagerie, and more. Jenny has also worked as a carpenter for Mercury Theatre, Court Theatre, The Wit Theatre, and Fireside Dinner Theatre and as electrician at Marriott Theatre, Mercury Theatre, Porchlight Music Theatre, Chicago Children’s Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, The University of Illinois Chicago, and the Athenaeum Center. Arrow Rock Lyceum Theatre in Arrow Rock, Missouri keeps her busy in the summers as their technical director.

It has been a joy watching a shy, enthusiastic young lady, grow into such a confident, outgoing, talented professional. The Racine Theatre Guild is so very grateful that, despite her busy schedule, she always has time for us.