Theatre.

Over the course of a few months, I worked closely with my director, Bridger Lutz, to create the acoustic aesthetic he envisioned. This included pulling sounds from royalty-free sound banks as well as making my own sounds if what we needed did not yet exist. With the help of QLab 5, I used over sixty unique sound files, including three homemade tracks, amounting to almost half a gigabyte of compressed and uncompressed audio to run the show.

This was the first show where I was not afraid to shy away from my previous philosophy of simplicity a bit. I progressively added more and more elements to the show to push me out of my comfort zone and make it that much more impactful.

I was training another student to take my place at the time, so I put him in charge of operating the sound during the show.

Samples of this project are available upon request. Visit the Resume page for my contact information.

The Cabaret opened the night with four songs performed by that year’s Seniors.

The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other is a silent, one-act play that relies on the physical performance of the actors. Our production involved around fifteen actors playing a dozen characters each with hundreds of props. We took this show to Playfest, a regional thespian festival held at the University of Montana, where we won twelve individual and group awards and scholarships, including Best Show.

Joseph is a family-friendly, telling of Joseph’s story in the Biblical Book of Genesis. As our bi-annual musical, we went all out with the production.

Featuring a live pit orchestra of twenty students and a few music teachers from around the school and district, we in sound were able to devote our focus to managing eighteen microphones, three on- and off-stage audio monitors, and coordination with lights and backstage.

With the creative excellence of April Wendt as our lighting designer and engineer, our production of MacBeth made use of every capability of our lighting system — and well.

This was the first children’s play our department had produced in a while and the first show where I was on the sound team. In fact, I was the sound team. While I did not enjoy it as much as I had hoped, I learned a few indispensable lessons: keep it simple, read the manual, and have a partner to help.

She Kills Monsters follows an older sister as she discovers and reads through a Dungeons and Dragons campaign her younger sister wrote before her and her parents’ tragic passing. She never got along with her well, but the campaign let them bond.

I was asked to operate the lights for this show the week before it opened. A substantial portion of the school either tested positive for Covid or was contact-traced, so we were given only one more week to perform. Our director decided to cut the second week of the intended show, Leaving Iowa, to perform She Kills Monsters as prepared by the Intermediate and Advanced Theatre classes.

Leaving Iowa follows an older son as he finds a fitting final resting place for his late father. As he continues his road trip through the Midwest, a series of flashbacks play out, sharing his past relationship with his father and family.

A heartwarming story with moments of tension, emotion, and comedy, this remains one of my favorite shows to have been part of.