Photos by Grace Jurchak unless otherwise noted.
The show opens with a monologue from the main character, Jenni, having a breakdown leading into a flashback. Act 2 returns to the time of that breakdown, so the director wanted a distinctive sound cue to tie those moments together. I recorded the actor saying the lines and then layered a few instances of it together, along with a little reverb for the effect.
Jenni is tormented by repeated automated calls from the phone company throughout the play which were recorded with a SM58.
As an extension of those automated calls, I designed the preshow music to be interrupted periodically with automated hold messages. These were recorded by the same actor as the lines in the show. The music itself was meant to be mind-numbing hold music.
The Ver*zon Play
Gettysburg College Theatre Department, Kline Theatre
Feb. 27-Mar. 2, 2025
Director: Dr. Susan Russell
Scenic Design: Heather Stokes
Costume Design: Juls Buehrer
Lighting Design: Jonathan Stiles
Assistant Lighting Design: Nicholas Ryan
Sound Design: Nicholas Ryan
Projection Design: Nicholas Ryan
Photos: Grace Jurchak
I served as the sound designer, assistant lighting designer, head electrician, and projection designer for this production. Being a show focused on a phone company, there were a lot of sound cues associated with phones. I wanted to try to make practical phone sound effects, triggered from QLab. I found an app called StageCaller that had this intended functionality. I did some testing to verify the concept worked, but Apple took it off the App Store a few days before I was able to download it to the actors’ phones due to its lack of updates. I then transitioned to using Go Button which functioned much the same way. I developed a protocol with stage management for the proper preparation and care of the phones since the actors were volunteering their personal phones. I was quite happy with the final product.
My part of the lighting design consisted of the practical elements. This consisted of LED tape which I was responsible for designing, budgeting, and implementing. I worked with the scenic designer to make sure the tape on the steps had protected from being knocked off by actors. I ran the tape on the underside of the overhang to help diffuse the light. The apron also had a run of LED tape which I worked with scenic to run some fake cabling in front of the tape to avoid the tape shining directly in the eyes of the front row. As for being head electrician, this was the first show integrating many more LED fixtures into the space, so I directed the addressing and patching of them. The show also had a few projection cues which I designed and ran from QLab.
*The LED Tape was not finished by the time most of the show photos were taken.
Nicholas Ryan 