Heritage Theatre Festival

Ruth Caplin Theatre

July 23 – August 2, 2014

Directed by:  Renee Dobson

Musical Direction:  Greg Harris

Scenic Designer:  Katie Bell Springman

Costume Designer:  Cassell Jones

Lighting Designer:  Nick Belley

 

 

Let us take a trip to Avenue Q, where the puppets curse and life is not the ideal world we might expect.  This show tells the story of people (and puppets/monsters) who have problems they face, just like us.  The first song, ‘It Sucks To Be Me’, tells us all the challenges these people face.  There’s a love story at work, puppet sex, and Gary Coleman.  In the end, each of the characters seeks to find their purpose in life.

 

Although the show clearly distinguishes itself as not associated with Sesame Street or the Jim Henson Company, the associations with puppets interacting with live performers creates a particular association in the minds of the audience.  As a result of this, the sound for this show needed to reflect that association in some way.  It’s a bit of an animated world, and so the sounds needed to reflect that slightly animated quality, being a little more ‘cartoony’ or over-the-top in certain ways.  This gave the director and I a lot of leeway in having fun with the sound effects, developing interesting ideas with them that reflected the characters.

 

This was a show where we had the challenge of finding a good place for our orchestra.  In this theatre, orchestral balance to the performers was going to be tricky, particularly if the orchestra was on stage anywhere.  The decision was made to isolate the orchestra in an offstage room and pipe their sound into the space.  This gave me perfect balance and control of the performers and the orchestra.

 

The show is traditionally performed with accompanying video.  These videos punctuate moments in the story very much like an episode of Sesame Street.  I was called upon to coordinate these videos into the production, using two hanging projectors and two large projection screens on either side of the stage.  It required programming the system that would preserve the content but still make it work within the world of our production.

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Weathervane Playhouse

July 27 – August 5, 2017

Directed by:  Christine O’Grady

Scenic Designer:  Jennifer Sansfacon

Costume Designer:  Renee Bell

Lighting Designer:  Dylan Bomgardner

 

 

This was my second run at Avenue Q, a humorous story where life is not ideal and perfect.  Humans exist next to puppets, and each is seeking a purpose in life.  Relationships come and go, and the puppets and humans all learn something about themselves.

 

My research for this piece remained consistent with my last run at this work.  The focus was creating the world of this play through the lens of the puppet and human interaction.  All the sounds needed to feel as if they belonged to a show for children, but also have a bit more grit and realism as these characters face real challenges.  The falling penny from the Empire State Building, the taxi screeching to a halt, the ambient backdrop of the Avenue Q neighborhood, all needed to feel like they could be used in a show for younger viewers, but have the adult quality that is the hallmark of this show.

 

With some of the characters, we were able to expand a bit more on the voicing through their microphones.  The actors’ voices were equalized differently depending upon the puppet and character they were doing.  Bad Idea Bears were brighter, while Lucy The Slut was darker.  During Princeton’s nightmare wedding, the laughing of the characters became menacing and distorted.

 

I was also tapped to coordinate the integration of the video.  This was a larger challenge, since the theatre did not have robust projections equipment.  The original thought was to have a laundry sheet unroll on stage, and we would project onto that.  This proved to be too technically challenging, and so we sought another solution.  Through the cooperation of the theatre Board of Directors, we were able to integrate two TVs into the scenic world that would play the videos.  These TVs would end up becoming a permanent part of the performance venue.