This show had only a handful of sound effects, most prominently at the tops of the acts. This is the voice over of Eisenhower’s inaugural speech that opened the play, with “Hail to the Chief” underscoring and introducing the speech. It was recorded with an SM58, and I processed it to imitate the distortion and spaciousness of the original given on the National Mall and the recordings of that speech. The voice over was also accompanied by an image of the White House projected. This worked to contrast between the image of Eisenhower in the public consciousness and the real man which the play sought to explore.
Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground
Florida Studio Theatre, Bowne Lab
Jan. 9 – Apr. 5, 2026
Director: Nancy Rominger
Costume Design: Julia Hornsby
Props Designer: Audrey Smith
Lighting Design: Kate Landry
Sound & Projections Design: Nicholas Ryan
Photos: Emiliano Mejias
Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground explores the real man behind the president and draws potent connections to the modern political environment that have only become more relevant since the play was written.
There were only a few sound cues through the play; those include voice overs at the top of the acts and some environmental ambiances at specific points. There was also a need for a phone, so we used a telephone line simulator to allow the stage manager to call the phone on stage for those moments. This allowed the phone to sound spatially correct as well as have immediate response to the pick up.
There were a number of projections through the show to recall different memories that Eisenhower recounted. The resolution to this design question was to project onto a window. Due to space, we had to use front projection, so I positioned the projector as far upstage as I could to minimize the throw’s interruption to actor blocking options. I created regions in QLab to cut out the window muntins and make the projected image appear as if through the window. Due to the angle of projection and resolution of the video signal, this created some shadows around the muntins, but those did not draw attention, and the overall effect work as desired. I also applied a video mask to the projections to fade the edges of the images away and establish the weathered quality of the memories. The only projection that did not have the mask applied was the White House image. That image was also projected onto the full window without cutting out the muntins as the White House was meant to demonstrate the larger than life image of Eisenhower in the public consciousness.
Nicholas Ryan 