In case you don’t speak the language, La Nouba is French for “live it up.” It’s also the title of the Cirque du Soleil show that makes its permanent home in Orlando, Florida. It’s here that Full Sail grad Sara Mooney has lashed her career to this image of billowing big-top spires, acrobats, jugglers, dancers, and dramatic theatrical sets and stages, all spun together by a dazzling light show and mesmerizing orchestral arrangements… and Mooney is living it up.

While a college student in Pennsylvania, Mooney discovered her love for show production when a friend convinced her to join the school’s theatre club. “The first time there, they had me stuck up in the scaffolding hanging lights,” she remembers, “and I loved it.” Later, an instructor suggested she check out Full Sail. “I was planning to go into the Recording Arts program there,” she says, “but once I found out [about] Show Production, I swapped programs.

“Full Sail was a very good experience. I was very happy with the instructors, especially since I got to know them on a personal level. They gave me a lot of opportunities to learn and increase what I knew by either practicing or finding extra time. They also gave me the opportunity to work on the Full Sail Live crew. It gave me a wide variety of experiences, from lighting to sound. I felt like I was really prepared when I got out of school – that I could handle anything that was thrown at me.”

That preparation comes in handy in Mooney’s position as a lighting tech on Orlando’s version of the popular French Canadian circus. During the shows, Mooney is usually responsible for handling a particular spotlight, but any give night can find her with a variety of responsibilities. “Depending on which one I run, I may have a lot of cues or I may not,” she says. “So operating a follow spot, I’m actually sitting there manually pulling the light. If I’m not running a spot, I’m a backup main console operator who will be running the majority of the show. In that case I have a lot to do during the show.”

Sara says she loves the creative outlet her job offers. “Although it’s a set show, there are quite often things that will happen where you have to make a split second decision. You have to pick somebody up with the spot, and you have to decide if it should be at a higher intensity or lower intensity, or if you need to pick them up at all because of something else that’s going on on the stage. Literally in an instant.”

Cirque du Soleil has been a great fit for Sara. In contrast to the time and travel demands of working on the road, she gets to go home every night, and work in a permanent installation. “And I’m fortunate to work with an extremely good crew that’s understanding and works well together,” Mooney says. “I take it one day at a time. My measure of when to leave [a job] is when the good days are outweighed by the bad. That’s when it’s time to move on.” And for now, the good days are plentiful at Cirque du Soleil.