A YOUNGSTOWN NATIVE RECALLS HOW HIS PASSION FOR LIGHTING BEGAN.

A Youngstown native recalls how his passion for lighting began.
By NANCILYNN GATTA
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
From his apartment window, Michael Tortora can see the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Rodin Museum.
From that location, he walks to work at Kling, an architectural, engineering, interiors and planning firm, where he was recently promoted to chief of the lighting department. He does this in addition to his job as director of lighting design/senior project lighting designer.
But, Tortora recalls that the view he had as a child growing up in Youngstown assists him with his work today.
"Visually, Youngstown, Ohio, has the best sunsets anywhere," said Tortora. "When I grew up on Philadelphia Avenue, I could see those gorgeous sunsets. They were the most orange things I've ever seen in my life. When you're thinking back and you're trying to come up with something, you think back to this orange that you recognize and connected with when you were in Youngstown looking at a smoggy, polluted sunset. As a designer, you need these visual references as stepping stones in your process because if you have nothing to relate to, it's just a guessing game."
Past experience
Tortora began his journey toward his present position as a teen attending Woodrow Wilson High School.
"I was in theater in high school. I studied under Bob Vargo, [director and teacher at Wilson]," he said.
After graduation, Tortora served in the U.S. Army for three years. He received a Humanitarian Award for his work in riot control at Fort Chafee in Arkansas during the influx of Cuban refugees to the United States.
Returning to Youngstown, he enrolled in Youngstown State University as a computer science major. But the university newspaper changed the direction of his life.
"I saw this ad in The Jambar that said it needed 12 guys to be in this courtroom drama called 'Trial of Big Bill Heywood.' I tried out for the show, and I did the play. The theater department did their magic, and they persuaded whoever came their way to become a theater major," he said.
Working with light
A fellow student helped him to realize his passion for lighting design.
"I was asked by Craig Duff if I would do the lighting for his one-man show at YSU. I said, 'I'd never done that. I've done sets. I've done costumes.' It was so great to hook up lights and individually control them. It felt like having all these suns in the sky, and I had total control over everything -- the color, brightness, the focus. It caught me," said Tortora.
After that experience, he began designing lights for local theatrical productions. He co-designed "Evita," at The Playhouse, designed at YSU Theatre, and Kent State Trumbull's summer stock shows.
Most of his lighting-design knowledge came from a play production class and the mentoring he received from Dr. Frank Castronovo, YSU professor of speech and communication and theater director.
"I have great respect for Frank Castronovo. He understood me," said Tortora.
Headed to Detroit
When it came time to choose a graduate school program, Tortora selected Castronovo's alma mater of Wayne State University in Detroit.
By this time, Tortora needed to support a wife and family, so he completed his master's in fine arts (lighting design) a year ahead of schedule.
While in Detroit, he worked at the Hilberry Theatre as a lighting designer.
"I got good reviews in the Detroit Free Press for 'Romeo and Juliet.' It was my first big production and a major stepping stone in thinking as a designer. When the year was over, [the paper] recapped the plays of the year, and they mentioned the lighting for 'Romeo and Juliet' again. It validated that I was in the right field," said Tortora.
Upon the completion of his advanced degree, Tortora worked in academia. He taught lighting design at West Virginia University and Wright State University.
At WVU, he was inspired to create the piece, "Jackson Pollock: In the Painting" with a WVU choreographer and composer Kevin Lloyd. The dance/performance art piece was performed off-off-Broadway at the Mint Theater.
"I was so frustrated with the theater that was being done at West Virginia University, as was another colleague who was a choreographer.
"I took Jackson Pollack, and I gave my interpretation of how he went from easel to floor. I wrote this 40-minute piece. A really good friend of mine did the soundtrack with movement. It's the most inspirational soundtrack and movement that I've ever seen," he said.
Tortora changed the direction of his lighting career from theater to architecture. The career move caused him to relocate to Atlanta and work at Newcomb & amp; Boyd.
Current position
He transferred to Kling at the millennium, where he has worked on such buildings as Frostburg State University's Compton Science Center and Merck Pharmaceuticals-Boston Research Center.
He believes that part of his success is the management style there.
"I'm definitely behind my own steering wheel. I just have to keep things in check. There is a lot of autonomy here."
Though he has achieved much success in his career, Tortora remembers where he started.
"I am the most unlikely person to get to where I am. I'm a juvenile delinquent who went to the service for direction, went to school as an undetermined major, and went into theater to tick my parents off.
"I became a professor right after grad school at WVU for four years; the family and the baby and the responsibility just led me to look for other places to work for financial reasons. And right now I am the head of the lighting department for the largest architectural firm in Philadelphia," Tortora said.