We're Here

Subway Sounds and Surreal Theater

We're Here is a 60 minute one-act play by Megan Rivkin that takes place on a New York City sidewalk. The play's minimalist set and surrealist script necessitated realistic ambience and sound effects. I aimed for as much sonic accuracy as possible while showcasing the style of the piece. For example, in a sound effect requiring a CNN broadcast, a news theme leads into a news story written by the playwright about a fictitious De Blasio legislation requiring high rise buildings to donate their stories to brownstones for 'building equality.'

Listen: Subway Announcement meganrivkin.com

You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown

Fall fun on a budget

This September production of the popular musical about Charlie Brown was produced as a piece to show to some of the incoming first year class at Tufts University. The director of the piece wanted to interpret the script as a 'growing up' story, where costumes, makeup, and directing showed the characters getting older over time. I tried to complement this with a lush sound design that subtly conveys the wonder that children have in the beginning and fades into realism as the musical progresses. Minimal sound reinforcement was possible, and creating balance between the pit and actors was difficult.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a musical that tells the story of a middle school spelling bee. Key priorities for the sound system were fidelity and gain before feedback. I utilized a Dante networked audio solution with the Yamaha CL5/Rio. To mitigate the undesirable accousitc properties of the space, the 12 wireless microphones were routed to a seperate cluster of speakers while the mains were used for the instrumental music and some sound effects. Each member of the pit wore headphones and had independent control of their monitor mix, which improved the comfort of the musicians and reduced bleed.

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DYHYS

Creating an immersive theater experience

Do You Hear Yourself is an experimental theater piece by Megan Rivkin where one live actor has a conversation with two recorded voices. All the sound playback and reinforcment is transmitted to the audience through headphones. The dialogue is also interspersed with sound clips from the internet, adding humor and gravity to the piece. Room tone, reverb, and panning slowly shift along with the content as the conversation onstage becomes deeper. Tension was elevated in select moments by triggering a secondary reverb with infinite hold for a few seconds at a very low level.