Professor combines activism with art

Joseph Amodei perches near the ceiling of the Paul Green Theater on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s campus.

They carefully attach lights to the grid hanging from the ceiling, positioning each one just so. 

After positioning the lights, Amodei climbs back up to run the power cables and connect them to the lighting board that controls them. 

They take a step back. 

The lighting designer wants to color certain lights, so Amodei attaches gels — colorful translucent sheets of plastic — to achieve the effect. 

The 500 seats surrounding the stage on three sides sit empty as they finish their preparations. Opening night for “The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby” is just a few weeks away, and soon, the actors will take to the stage under the lights Amodei and the rest of the lighting crew have worked so hard to install. 

While the show was art, lighting the show seemed less so. To Amodei, the work felt completely technical. 

Their mind changed after a conversation with their boss, and the theater’s lighting designer, Cecilia Durbin. 

As technical as it all seemed, she explained to Amodei that lighting is its own type of art, too.

“I was very excited about that,” Amodei said. “It brought me into this sort of conceptual idea of telling stories through light and time, and I was basically hooked. I never looked back.”

Amodei’s been in the arts since receiving their master’s degree in video and media design at Carnegie Mellon. Amodei then worked at Chatham University for three years before joining Lehigh’s theater department as an assistant professor of media design. 

They combine their work in the theater, designing lighting, projections and other emerging media, with a passion for activism and teaching.

Amodei always loved telling stories in any form possible, from playing Dungeons and Dragons as a kid to picking up guitar and singing in high school. 

But it wasn’t until college that they found their way to theater. 

Early freshman year at UNC-Chapel Hill, Amodei was double majoring in philosophy and psychology. 

While searching for a work-study position, they scrolled through the school’s job portal, and the description for lighting electrician caught their eye. 

Soon after, they changed their major to art history.

And then, finally, studio art. 

They said they chose the major because it allowed them to focus on conceptual art and connect with the mediums they wanted to use in their media design work. 

At the time, Amodei said, many of their classes covered traditional artistic methods, but the curriculum was changing to include more emerging media. 

“They were sort of debating this curriculum, and I was like, ‘Can I take this animation class instead of my life drawing class?’” Amodei said. “The education system was changing as far as updating the pedagogy, and I was very much excited about that.”

It was through these alternative classes that they gained the skills needed to create art through projection, virtual reality and other digital media. 

As Amodei discovered the world of theater, they also experienced a class awakening that led them to call for change in their community. 

They said they saw how the economic system values money over humanity, and combined with the insight that came with their experience of classism and their queer identity, they knew they wanted to make a difference. 

They started protesting and speaking out against cuts to education funding, gerrymandering and discriminatory laws against gay marriage.

Adil Mansoor, a theater director and arts educator, met Amodei in graduate school and the two have been collaborating since. 

He said he shares Amodei’s passion for activism and admires how seriously they take it. 

“Of all the people I know, I feel like they actually walk the talk,” Mansoor said. “A lot of people will talk about justice, but I’ve seen (Amodei) organizing and doing grassroots work.”

Combining art and activism came naturally for Amodei. 

“I’m deeply interested in people and ideas and politics and changing the world and activism, so,  my artwork is not separate from that,” Amodei said. 

Through their work, Amodei aims to highlight the experiences of everyday people who try to make the world a better place. 

They designed projections for “This Emancipation Thing,” a show about second-wave feminism in the ‘60s and ‘70s. They also did design work for “the dance floor, the hospital room, and the kitchen table,” a show telling the stories of care workers during the AIDS crisis. 

Beyond telling stories, Amodei hopes these and other shows they have worked on will encourage audiences to care about activism and take action in their own communities. 

Amodei said they try to reach a variety of audiences — whether it be people who share their views or people who are being exposed to these ideas for the first time. 

They said they try to reach people in a broad values-based way, which includes taking art outside of its natural contexts. 

“Also, sometimes it’s trying to more deeply challenge and have more complex connections with the audiences of people who do come to these art things,” Amodei said.

They said this approach often gets people more involved and makes theater and activism more accessible. 

While activism is not a requirement in their courses, Amodei encourages students to consider the values they live by and to advocate for the needs of others.

They said their time in college was formative, and part of why they wanted to become a professor was to pay it forward and help students discover some of the things they did in their undergraduate years. 

They also want to teach their students how to love and be excited by learning.

Stephen Sakasitz, a collaborator on Amodei’s immersive design class, said he’s seen how excited Amodei’s students have been about projects they worked on in the class. 

“They really encouraged an active learning environment — it’s more hands-on and the students interacting with each other and collaboration — and that kind of teaching and learning environment is really what we encourage with all of our faculty,” Sakasitz said.

Amodei said they have used discussions and group work in their classes to foster this engagement, especially for a diverse group of students. 

Their classes have welcomed students from art, technology and many other academic areas. 

While they know not all of their students will go on to work in media design or even the arts, Amodei believes their classes teach students important lessons about the world around them. 

Art and performance, they said, surrounds daily life. Studying them helps students make sense of how the world operates. 

“I feel like it’s maybe oversaid, but I feel like art saved my life,” Amodei said. “It gave me an ability to have some purpose and meaning. I love sharing these things with students and getting them tools to critically think about the mediated world around them.”