Sound Design
University of Memphis
Fall 2022- Present
Elektra
University of Memphis
Sworn to avenge the murder of her father, Elektra sets to work alongside her brother Orestes to seek and eye for an eye upon her mother Clytemnestra, and her lover Aegisthus.
Below is a sample of the environmental underscore of the story of the stage where Elektra tells the tale of her father hunting and killing a stag in the forest
Director: Christian Tripp, Scenic Designer: Claire Kelly, Costume Designer: Caelen Ingram, Lighting Designer: Chris Hanian, Assistant Lighting Designer: Tevin Mabone, Stage Manager: Lily Anderson
Rocky Horror Show
University of Memphis
Welcome to the world of Dr. Frank-N-Furter and his castle of mischief through the stumbling of Brad and Janet on a night they will never truly forget.
Selections below include Riff Raff calling out Rocky’s Escape, Tuning in the Monitors, and the Soundscape for the car having an unexpected flat!
Director: Roberta Inscho, Scenic Designer: Natalie Ervolino, Costume Designer: Heather Duzan, Props Coordinator: Summer Gallagher, Lighting Designer: Anthony Pellecchia, Associate Lighting Designer: Chris Hanian, Stage Manager: Jasmine Summers
CFCArts Youth Production
Fall of 2020
Are You Now or Have You
Ever Been A Pirate
Show Director: John Curcuru
The delightfully playful story of a band of friends playing pirate amongst the neighborhood learning of the true value of loyalty and friendship through their adventures, discovering that anyone can be a pirate.
Wish
Show Director: Leah Porrata
Charlie Reese, a girl of 11, is sent away to live with her Aunt and Uncle in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. At first she struggles to find happiness until she finds a lost dog, with whom she names Wishbone, and a befriends a neighborhood boy named Howard. Although it takes some time to adjust, Charlie soon discovers that home is not where you came from, but from the family you truly hold dear.
Exhibits in The Zoo
Show Director: John Curcuru
Set in a Nazi-Germany internment camp, the story unfolds on a boy, Mendel, who is mute going through the struggles of being on display with the rest of his Jewish family and others alike in the ghettos. Mendel discovers a camera, with which he gains much amusement, though his parents fear it will attract unwarranted attention towards the boy. The use of the camera flashes in the end signify the final moments of the boys life, into silence for the audience to absorb.
Princess Bee and The
Royal Good-Night Story
Show Director: Leah Porrata
Princess Bee has her consistent royal routine of brushing her hair and hearing her mothers wonderful good-night stories. Though she is truly finding it tough when her mother the queen goes on a royal journey and the rest of her royal family attempts to pitch in and tell royal good-night stories of their own. In the end, Princess Bee is able to pull in her confidence and tell her own good-night story just as her mother returns and reunites as a happy royal family once again.
Forestburgh Playhouse
Summer 2014
My Fair Lady
Show Director: Misti Wills
Dear ole Eliza Doolittle, Thick in her cockney accent, seeks to live her life as an ordinary lady simply peddling roses on the street for her living. Along comes Professor Higgins, who studies her accent and aims to prove to his colleague, Colonel Pickering, his skills of teaching the phonetic arts, can rid this girl of her rugged cockney accent and turn her to be a proper lady of society. Through struggles and triumphs and the occasional set-back, Higgins succeeds, yet displays no affection towards Eliza for her success.
Higgins discovers that Eliza has left, and wishes to find her to make amends, only to discover she has taken solace at his mothers. Seeing how Higgins is unable to see through his narcissisms, she leaves for good. Later we find Higgins, listening to the recordings of Eliza on their first lesson, as she returns to see that he truly is capable of change.
Best Little Whorehouse
In Texas
Show Director: Dann Dunn
When you’re looking for a good time, you head to the Chicken Ranch to see Miss Mona (played by Loretta Swit), and her chicks. While there are those that see the Chicken Ranch as a place of scandal and lustful sin, Miss Mona, allows it to be a safe house for those looking to blow off some steam, save some money and gain a fresh start. Not to mention the good nature of the Alumni Associations and the traditions they have long kept to treat the winning team of the annual rivalry, typically them aggie boys, to a much deserved night of fun and frolic with Miss Mona’s chicks.
Sadly, not everyone is keen to the fun that everyone else sees at the Chicken Ranch, and do-gooder Melvin P. Thorpe, aims his sights on the chicken ranch, in hopes of shutting it down for good.
Mame
Show Director: Dann Dunn
when you want to throw an amazing party, you call Mame! When life throws you down, who can pick you up? Mame! Who can take care of a nanny and 10 year old orphan nephew, while hoping form job to job and enjoying life to it’s grandest??? MAME!
Though life never goes as planned, Mame (played by Loretta Swit), always has a way to pluck out the fun in any bleak situation and turn life into a party and adventure. Raising her orphaned nephew Patrick, she instills in him to embrace the fun of life and to never regret who you truly are. As Patrick grows older going through reform school, he strays away form that life lesson, as he is engaged to a debutant. Once Mame discoveries the unhappiness she sees deep down in Patrick’s soul, she knows there is only one way to bring him back to the surface of who he is, and that is with an adventurous party!
For the overall design, the show focused not so much on the effects but more towards the poppy liveliness of the music and delivery of the show stopping numbers.
Oakland University
Fall 2012- Spring 2015
A Doll’s House
Show Director: Lynnae Lehfeldt
Nora, who is not only joyed by the holiday spirit and a love of spending money, but is also overjoyed at the fact of paying off the loan in which she took out to help her loving husband Torvald. However the festivities take a turn as Nora is then blacked mailed by a fired associate of Torvald who helped initiate the loan in the first place, without Torvalds knowing. Faced with the unruly truth, Torvald becomes unhinged, and Nora is forced to make a drastic decision of whether to stay with her family in shame, or to leave and live her own life.
The focus of the design, tailors to the slow twist of the emotional breakdown of the family to where the piano chords struck in the beginning leads you to wonder what could go wrong at such a delightful time of the year?
Blithe Spirit
Show Director: Thomas Suda
Charles Condomine, a novelist, is set to write a novel that aims to create a fiction on a spiritualist who is homicidal. Inviting over his friends as well as having his charming wife and Edith, the maid, involved in a séance with Madame Arcatti. Unbeknownst to Charles, his late wife, Elvira, returns as an apparition. As the play progresses, Elvira is set to kill Charles so that he may join him in the afterlife, and instead kills Ruth, Charles wife. Stuck in the never-ending torment of his former lovers, Charles is desperate to be rid of them. Calling upon Madame Arcatti to fix her summoning, it is discovered that the Maid was the true charmer of the spirits and that Charles is simply free to go, leaving his former wives to haunt the house.
Sweet Charity
Show Director: Anthony Guest
Oh Charity, How you only wish for your life to just go with the brighter side of life, just like your own view on life… “SPLASH”! Why hello there Mr. Vittorio, aren’t you a handsome one. Well on second thought maybe not… “DING”. Here on the elevator of love enters Oscar, the complete opposite of Vittorio and just the man Charity needs as they whisk away on a Subway ride to fate.
Discussing the overall direction of the design with the Director and Music Director, I noticed that not only the Orchestra preformed most of the effects for the show but all the key moments in Charity’s life were accented with these effects. So we decided to create artificial sound-scapes and effects to help emphasize key turning moments in Charity’s life as she tries to get her love life on the right path.
Spring Awakening
Show Director: Fred Love
Set in 1891 Germany, Melchior, Moritz, Wendla, and the rest of their classmates discover the changes of their growing bodies, the strains of the adult world weighing in on them, and seeking answers of the unanswered questions of life’s choices. Melchior and Wendla become fond for one another and through their discoveries of love, lust, sex and themselves, Wendla becomes pregnant. While this happens, Moritz facing the pressures of failing school and being able to become a functioning member of society, he commits suicide, which is later pinned on Melchior as the root cause of the action and lands Melchior in prison. Once Melchior is free he later comes to discover the tragic fate of Wendla, who died to the results of a unprofessional abortion.
Early in my Sound Design career at Oakland University, my primary goal of the design was to have a raw feeling form the band, and have the sound be driven from the source of their amps, instead of played back on a full system. As for the funeral, the flow of Moritz death into the funeral wake, was a combination of using the lightning strike to invoke the gunshot that transited into the storm. With a non traditional set, I had to create the solid environments as well as the physical actions of the space as well, such as simply knocking on a door, and stylizing the knocks to match the character delivering the knocks.