From the Desk of the Sound Designer...

Hmm, first of all, what exactly is a sound designer? My mom has been asking me that for years......I first got thru to her when I said “Think about Jaws -- that shark isn’t very scary when you see a picture is it? Now add the music and the sounds? Scary, huh.”

Simply, the sound designer is the person responsible for the entire aural environment of a show. Every single sound you hear in the theatre has been built by a sound designer, from the raw materials of musical instruments and sound effects. Chances are that if you glance in the theatre during technical rehearsals, there will be two people out in the house sitting behind the glow of monitors, the lighting and sound designers building their designs for the show.

So what about Take Me Out? Well, there are a couple of sound cues. Actually, a lot of sound cues; some are musical in nature, some are environmental, and some are purely practical. All of them were tremendously fun to design, build, and implement, each with its own challenges. In addition to all of the practical effects in the show (bats cracking, crowd cheering, etc) there is a considerable amount of underscoring to help clarify and intensify the dramatic moments of the show. Characters have their own individual styles and types of music associated with them; hopefully the sound design helps to clarify the non-linear style of this play. While I was writing the music for the play, I tried to help tell the story -- you’ll have to listen to the show to tell me if it was successful.

A show like Take Me Out the work is in the details of being at the ballpark -- think of how subtly different each crowd reaction is in a baseball game. Creating the environment of the ballpark has so many levels -- the crowd, the vendors, the players, the organ. Each is needed to fully realize the entire experience, and so designing a sequence means creating each of these layers, and then marking them sound as realistic as possible. Add these environments to the music of the show, and you have an idea of the job of a sound designer.

I love working for WaterTower, great directors, technicians, actors, and musicians make designing there an incredibly rewarding experience, and that keeps me coming back. Through the years I have watched WaterTower and seen the theater, its productions, and the production values steadily improve and grow. Great production values mean something, and Watertower and the city of Addison are consistently committed to pushing those values higher.

Even moving half way across the country hasn’t kept me from designing at WaterTower, I make the trip down to Addison as often as I can. Take Me Out is my 28th sound design for WaterTower, and I’m looking forward now to sound and media designing for an innovative new production of Into The Woods.

A designers work is never done, but, unfortunately, my work on Take Me Out is. I’m writing this note from a technical rehearsal for another production I’m designing in Pennsylvania, but my thoughts are still there with the Empires.

-Curtis

Curtis Craig (Sound Designer, Take Me Out) heads the sound design program in the School of Theatre at Penn State University.