- April 25, 2024
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For most theatergoers, lights are purely practical: They allow the audience to see what’s on the stage. But for Jack Neiberlein, lighting a stage is a creative outlet. He’s so passionate about it that he does the lighting for more than two dozen shows at the Flagler Auditorium each year, often working from 7 a.m. till 11 p.m.
Something else has kept Neiberlein in Flagler County for the past 22 years, though. It's another passion he didn’t know he had: teaching.
“Where would we be without Jack Neiberlein?” Auditorium Director Amelia Fulmer asked. “We would be at a loss — because of his experience and his years of growing with the auditorium, understanding how everything works. And the patience he has with students. To have someone who knows how to lead and teach children how to lead — that’s very much of an asset.”
Fulmer said Neiberlein is patient and kind with students, whether they are his own students or not. When she was an instructor in Flagler Schools herself, she brought young student-performers to the Auditorium, and Neiberlein gave them a memorable experience.
“He would say, ‘We’ve got to make sure these kids sound good and look good,’” Fulmer recalled. “It was never, ‘Well, they’re not professionals.’”
Neiberlein said, in a recent interview with the Palm Coast Observer, that he’s proud of several of his students who have gone on to professional careers, including Chris Lutz, who has worked on Broadway.
“It allows me to keep a toe in the pro world,” he said.
Neiberlein began in the pro world when, while attending Ohio State University, he worked on gory special effects for two low-budget horror movies, including “Beyond Dream’s Door.” He got married to Renae, whom he had known since eighth grade, in 1991, and they moved to Orlando, where Neiberlein did some acting and became the lighting director for a year-round haunted house called Terror on Church Street.
“We figured we couldn’t compete with the darkness — the darkness was the scariest thing,” Neiberlein said. “So the designer would create these beautiful sets, and I would have these little pools of light. Others said, ‘We can’t see the set!’ But, less is more, and it really worked.”
The haunted house closed for good in 1999, and Neiberlein had the chance to travel the world in other design projects, but, by then, his son, Connor, was 2 years old, and Neiberlein decided to find a job that wouldn’t require travel.
He applied for the technical director job at the Flagler Auditorium, on the campus of Flagler Palm Coast High School, and got it.
“When I first started, I wasn’t too keen on the educator part,” Neiberlein said. “I wanted to do the shows and design. But it didn’t take too long to figure out that was the most important part of the job. I really feel like I’m making a difference here with getting kids access to a theater like this — which most kids in the United States don’t anymore.”
He praised the community's decision decades ago to support the arts enough to build an auditorium of this quality.
"Now that I’m older, I just want to be surrounded by art more and more, until my time is done."
JACK NEIBERLEIN, Flagler Auditorium technical director
Some of the students who take his theater classes are there because they couldn’t find a better elective. Some of those are dropout risks, and the theater keeps them in school.
“Then I get some who do want this to be their career,” he said, “and when you see that creativity blossom, that is incredibly satisfying.”
Neiberlein knows that most art-loving students will never get a job in the arts. But some do. And even if they don’t, they still learn to be “more complete human beings” and how to be part of community theater and painting groups later in life.
“Nobody goes into a town and says, ‘Look at that factory — it’s the best thing in town,’” Neiberlein said. “All the arts troupes, CRT, the Flagler Playhouse, the Art League — those are the best parts of Flagler County for me, and for a lot of others. It doesn’t matter whether you’re operating on a pro or amateur level; when you think back on your life, I just appreciate art more and more. Now that I’m older, I just want to be surrounded by art more and more, until my time is done.”
