TPA3022 is the first course in theatrical lighting design — learning to decide what a production should look like in light, and to communicate that decision so a crew can realise it.
Florida's statewide description covers "the equipment, process and paperwork involved in the creation of lighting for live theatre," through which "students explore what a lighting designer does [and] the processes a designer" follows. UWF's is more specific about method: an "introduction to the work of the lighting designer through theoretical design projects and light lab projects," where the theoretical designs cover the design process for lighting a production and the light lab projects "build the student's ability to understand light and how to use light in a theatre situation."
⚠⚠ The paired structure is the pedagogy, and it is worth understanding before you start. Lighting design cannot be learned only on paper, because the relationship between an instrument, a colour, an angle and what a body on stage actually looks like is not predictable from a drawing. Nor can it be learned only by playing with lights, because professional lighting design is executed through paperwork — a light plot, a section, an instrument schedule, a channel hookup — that other people build from. The theoretical projects teach the thinking; the light lab teaches what light does.
⚠ This is the design side of theatrical lighting, and Florida numbers the technical side separately. That distinction runs through the whole prefix and it matters for your career — see Special Information.
Two Florida public institutions carry this number: Florida Atlantic University and the University of West Florida, both at three credits. ⚠⚠ But Florida carries "Lighting Design I" under more than one number, which is a genuine transfer problem — also below.
This is the most consequential practical point on this page, and it affects transfer directly.
| Number | Statewide title | Carried by |
|---|---|---|
TPA3022 | Lighting Design 1 | FAU, UWF — this course |
TPA4020 | Lighting Design I | FSU, UF (UF titles it simply Lighting Design) |
TPA3020 | — | ⚠⚠ named in UWF’s own prerequisite for TPA4021C — and no Florida public institution carries it |
⚠⚠ Three numbers circulate for what is recognisably the same first course in lighting design, and the institutions know it — UWF writes the prerequisite for its second course as "TPA 3020 OR TPA 3022", accommodating the fragmentation internally.
⚠⚠⚠ And the statewide record has not caught up. Florida's own prerequisite for TPA4021 (Lighting Design II) names TPA 4020 — a number UWF, which carries TPA4021C, does not offer. So the state record describes a prerequisite chain that does not exist at the institution teaching the course.
What to do about it. ⚠ Do not try to match on the number when transferring. Send the syllabus and your portfolio, and expect a receiving programme to place you on what you can actually do — which in a design discipline is the normal method anyway.
Worth setting out because the TPA prefix splits along it and the numbers do not always make it obvious.
| Design side | Technical / craft side |
|---|---|
| TPA3022 / TPA4021C — lighting design | TPA3223C — lighting technology: equipment, dimmers, control, electronics |
| TPA3064C / TPA4061 — scene design | TPA4077C — scene painting; stagecraft and construction numbers |
| TPA4045C — costume design | costume construction numbers |
⚠⚠ These are different jobs, different unions and different career paths. A designer decides what a production looks like; an electrician, carpenter, painter or draper realises it. USA Local 829 represents designers, IATSE the technicians.
⚠ The practical advice, which working professionals give consistently: learn both. Almost nobody is hired as a lighting designer straight out of a degree. The technical skills are what pay while the design career is being built, and a designer who understands what is actually possible to hang, focus and power in the time available is a better designer and a far easier colleague.
| Institution | Its title | Credits | Prerequisite |
|---|---|---|---|
| University of West Florida (SUS) | Lighting Design I | 3 | TPA 2200 OR TPA 2200C |
| Florida Atlantic University (SUS) | Lighting Design 1 | 3 | not retrievable |
Both carriers award three credits and use the same title. Florida's statewide record names the prerequisite as TPA 2000, 2200 (introduction to theatre production and stagecraft); UWF requires TPA 2200 or TPA 2200C — the stagecraft course, in either its plain or integrated form.
The 45 contact hours recorded here is Florida's convention for a three-credit course with no C or L suffix. ⚠⚠ Expect the real commitment to be higher. UWF's description includes "light lab projects", and production work in a theatre department routinely runs beyond scheduled hours — particularly during technical rehearsals. The credit value describes the registration, not the time.
⚠ FAU's catalogue was not reachable when this guide was written — FAU does not expose a public course catalogue at its catalogue host — so its description could not be read. UWF places the course in its College of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, Department of Theatre.
An upper-division course following stagecraft. It leads to TPA4021C (Lighting Design II), and sits alongside scene design (TPA3064C) and the technical numbers in a production-focused theatre degree.
⚠ A 3000-level course carrying upper-division credit. Florida's statewide record classifies it as transferable to an institution offering the same course, with no Gordon Rule designation and no general-education category.
⚠ It is marked for dual enrolment with elective high-school credit. Note that TPA does discriminate on this field — five numbers in the prefix carry PERFORMING FINE ARTS credit instead — but this is not one of them, so the elective marking here is a real classification rather than boilerplate.
⚠⚠ Given the number fragmentation described above, transfer on portfolio and syllabus, not on the course number.
Lighting design has adopted computation steadily and without much drama. Drafting moved to Vectorworks; paperwork to Lightwright; previsualisation lets a designer see an approximation of a plot before load-in; and moving lights and LED fixtures are themselves computational instruments. ⚠ A student entering this field will use all of it.
Generative tools add something new: images. A model will produce a striking rendering of a stage picture from a text description in seconds, and that is genuinely useful at the concept stage — for showing a director a mood, testing an idea, or generating variations to react to.
⚠⚠⚠ But this course exists to teach the step that image cannot supply, and it is worth being precise about what that step is. A generated picture shows a result with no account of how it is achieved. A light plot is the opposite: it is a buildable specification — these instruments, in these positions, with these colours, on these circuits, within the electrical capacity and rigging positions this theatre actually has. ⚠ The design is not the picture; the design is the plot that produces it in a real room with a real budget on a real schedule.
The failure mode is concrete and preceptors see it. A generated image will happily show light with no plausible source, shadows inconsistent with any rig, and effects no instrument produces. A student who has done the light lab work recognises immediately that a picture is unbuildable; a student who has not, cannot — and will present a director something that cannot be delivered, which is a serious professional error.
⚠ There is also a straightforward caution about the technical content. Instrument specifications, gel numbers, beam angles and electrical calculations are equipment-specific and safety-relevant. Verify against manufacturer data and your theatre's actual inventory, and treat anything touching electrical load or rigging as something to confirm with your technical director rather than a chat window.
Used well: generating concept imagery to react to and discard, explaining an optical or colour-theory concept differently, and drafting paperwork formats you then fill from your own plot. ⚠ The portfolio point matters here as in every design field — employers ask what you designed and why, and a portfolio of generated images answers neither question.
Generated September 15, 2026 · Updated September 15, 2026