Savannah McComb started this week as the Wildcats’ performing arts technician and technical director.

She was born and raised in Michigan and went to Michigan State University where she got a degree in technical theater with a focus on lighting and design.

Before she moved to Oregon, she traveled with a variety of large Broadway shows and touring artists as a freelance lighting designer, director, and programmer. McComb toured with Stomp: the extremely popular UK percussion group, as well as the famous Broadway show Hairspray supporting the video, lighting, and technical components of production.

Later she worked on a live Wild Kratts tour where she was around children from the ages 5-13.  McComb was attracted to teaching high schoolers after touring with Wild Kratts and (to her surprise and delight) liking her time with a younger group of kids.

“It was a really cool experience getting to see them so immersed with the arts because it’s not something you see all the time. A lot of the time you see kids interact with their phones or TVs but I got to see them get really into and excited about the performance and that was really cool.”

After working with college-age students she decided that she wanted to meet in the middle and work with high school students who are getting into the age where they’re deciding what they want to do and becoming really ecstatic about it. 

“I thought it would be really cool to kind of maybe even take a step back further and help kids since it’s kind of something I just experienced in college going from school into a professional working career, I want to kind of help them thrive and succeed on that because I think you can get taught on what it is to be a successful performing artist or a successful technician but having somebody with experience that can guide and get you excited is what pushes students the most.”

Savannah wants to come into our school and give us the opportunities, resources, and facilities she didn’t have in both high school and college. She wants to get students excited about the new facilities and all of the opportunities that will come with it. She hopes to attract a  group of students who not only work hard in performing arts throughout high school but that want to look into college and careers in that direction as well.