Welcome
John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Sundog Theatre seeks plays set on the Staten Island Ferry
New and original, one-act plays about our favorite boats, the Staten Island
Ferries.
10-25 minutes in length and set on the Staten Island Ferry (Note: not performed
on the Ferry).
Set in a contemporary time period. Strong priority will be given to plays with
2 characters, however, 3-character plays will be considered. No special set
pieces other than benches or railings found on the Ferry, limited and easily
accessible props/costumes, and no special sound or lighting.
***
One-Act Submissions for CapitalQ Theatre Festival
We are interested in plays at all levels of development from playwrights of all
levels of experience. What we are looking for is an exciting story surrounding
the queer experience that begs to be performed on stage. Our goal is to aid
playwrights in presenting the story they are excited to tell on stage, with
whatever resources they find valuable. We are especially interested in a myriad
of stories about the LGBTQ+ experience and are hoping our festival’s
representation accurately represents the diversity in our community.
***
The Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival honors new American plays that
provide dynamic performance opportunities for college-aged actors.
The festival endeavors both to recognize playwrights for their outstanding work
and to provide a resource for universities across the country to identify
dynamic plays with robust roles for college-aged actors for production at their
institutions. The festival features both a full-length and short play division.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site
at https://www.nycplaywrights.org
***
*** SOUND DESIGN ***
The Old Vic Theatre in Bristol, England, is spending this year celebrating its
250th anniversary. And they're doing something pretty dramatic. They're taking
a cue from their predecessors, by reviving some of the antique ways of
producing sound effects for the stage.
For this summer's production of King Lear, the theater is using technology from
the 18th century to create effects for rain, wind and thunder. Using
old-fashioned wooden wheels, wooden gutters and wooden balls, they can recreate
the sounds of a thunderstorm.
It starts with wind. "It's like a wooden wheel and a handle on the side of
it," says the theater's artistic director, Tom Morris.
"That's cutting-edge 18th-century sound technology," Morris says.
Next is rain.
It "bizarrely looks like a sort of enormous, ancient, upside-down airplane
wheel made entirely of wood," he says.
But the show-stopper is way up in the rafters, above the stage. There's an
attic space that looks like an ancient barn. A gutter system in the roof runs
the length of the audience, about 25 yards across. It's made of a single plank
on all three of its sides, built from 1766 pitch pine.
They call it the Thunder Run.
More...
https://www.npr.org/2016/01/24/464102357/british-theater-showcases-special-effects-from-18th-century
***
There’s an old saying, invoked by Abe Jacob, one of the forefathers of modern
theatrical sound design, that everyone in theatre knows two jobs, their own and
sound design. While that statement may be a comic exaggeration, it gets at the
frequent confusion surrounding sound designers and what it takes to do what
they do.
The confusion may be understandable, as the field remains among the newest
distinct design disciplines in theatre. The job title “sound designer” didn’t
even appear on Broadway until more than midway through the 20th century. Jacob
is one of the first two men to receive the credit, for his work on Jesus Christ
Superstar in 1971. (Jack Mann received the title in 1961 for Show Girl.) For
context, lighting design, also a relatively new designation, only became a Tony
category in 1970.
More...
https://www.americantheatre.org/2019/07/02/hearing-the-difference/
***
On Broadway, the field of sound design has long been dominated by men and
lacking in diversity.
But this season, sound designer Twi McCallum made her Broadway debut with
“Chicken & Biscuits” and likely became the first woman of color to design
sound on Broadway. One day after it opened, “Is This a Room” made its debut
with Sanae Yamada, who is also a woman of color, as co-sound designer.
One major roadblock to reaching these milestones, according to McCallum, has
been making connections with the right people.
“A lot of directors who have been doing this for many years have a core group
that they go to,” McCallum said. “And it’s really hard to break into that group
to give that slot to somebody else.”
More...
https://broadwaynews.com/2021/11/08/broadway-sound-designers-break-new-barriers/
***
Gareth Owen is an acclaimed British sound designer whose portfolio includes
many of the world's biggest musical theatre spectaculars, including 'Disney's
Hunchback Of Notre Dame,'Sister Act', 'Hairspray', and 'Disney's Little
Mermaid' to name just a few.
Impressively, Gareth also received the prestigious Olivier Award two years
running for his Sound Design contributions on 'Memphis' and 'Merrily We Roll
Along'. As many of our readers fall into the rock and roll sound engineer
category, we caught up with Gareth to discuss how sound in the theatre world
differs from the more widely understood world of live music.
How did you get started, and what drew you to sound design over other areas of
the audio industry?
"One of my early ambitions was to be a lighting engineer. My father was a
teacher and he looked after the lights at a local school; I have distinct
memories of sitting behind an old lighting desk moving faders while he focused
lights.
My parents advised against a career in lighting (wisely in hindsight), and
suggested accountancy or medicine. Ignoring them, I embarked on a sound
engineering career — initially in rock n' roll. As my experience grew, I
realised that theatre was a much bigger technical challenge and that if I
wanted to be truly the best sound engineer I could be, I needed to master the
theatre art form. My break into theatre came when I was asked to cover sound on
the Blues Brothers West-End musical at The Whitehall Theatre. I didn't have any
money at the time, so I made friends with the band, purchased a tent, and lived
in their garden for ten weeks while I mixed the show. Great memories, and the
rest is history, as they say."
More...
https://www.shure.com/en-US/performance-production/louder/gareth-owen-interview-theatre-sound-designer
***
What happens in a theatrical production when the script calls for a “mob” but
you have only a small cast of actors? Sound Designers to the rescue!
This past spring, Michigan State University Department of Theatre Sound Design
instructor Lucas Nunn collaborated with a Voice Over class comprised of the
2021 MFA Acting Cohort and led by Assistant Professor of Acting, Voice, and
Speech Deric McNish. They recorded in the lobby of the Wharton Center for
Performing Arts to create “walla walla”, also known as crowd noises, for our
Spring production of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
More...
https://theatre.msu.edu/news/anatomy-of-a-sound-cue/
***
'Hamilton' Is Revolutionizing the Art and Science of Broadway Sound Design
The sound designer for the celebrated Broadway musical sits down with
Motherboard for a wide-ranging interview.
Hamilton, the Broadway juggernaut about "the ten-dollar founding
father" Alexander Hamilton, is expected to dominate this Sunday's Tony
Awards during a televised ceremony in which the cultural phenomenon has been
nominated for a record-breaking 16 awards.
There is little doubt among Broadway insiders that the Tonys will be the latest
triumph for the most universally celebrated musical to hit the Great White Way
in decades. The only suspense now is just how much hardware the Hamilton cast
and crew will carry home.
The creator and star of Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda, has already been honored
with a MacArthur "genius" grant and a Pulitzer Prize. The musical's
Platinum-selling original cast recording won a Grammy Award and peaked at
number one on the Billboard Rap charts. Miranda, along with his cast-mates and
principal creative colleagues, were feted at a White House ceremony during
which First Lady Michelle Obama called the show the "best piece of art in
any form that I have ever seen in my life."
More...
https://www.vice.com/en/article/mg73pq/hamilton-is-revolutionizing-the-art-and-science-of-broadway-sound-design
***
Seeing “Sound House” and “This Is the Color Described by the Time” is a bracing
reminder of what most other shows do not do. The two plays, presented in
repertory at the Flea Theater explore a sense that too often falls by the
wayside onstage — sound.
Going to the theater, you would be forgiven for thinking only sight matters.
Sound design is a stepchild that’s neglected at best, abused at worst. The mud
coming out of speakers at too many Broadway shows, supposedly the apex of
stagecraft, is appalling.
Vision — ahem — is lacking when it comes to theatrical sound. Everybody knows
you need to have it, but too many productions do not care all that much. Can
the audience hear what the actors say? Good enough! What about playing songs
during scene changes? My, what an inspired device! Are singers properly miked?
Bring on the Tony! (Or not: It took until 2008 to have awards for sound design.
The category was eliminated in 2014; it will be back for the 2018 edition, but
voting will be restricted to a subset of expert voters — as if everyone else
doesn’t have functioning ears.)
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/26/theater/sound-house-this-is-the-color-described-by-the-time.html