Overview
I have 14 years of professional theatre experience, seven of them as a Sound Designer and composer. My sonic tools typically consist of both composed and sampled music, sound effects, and live signal processing. I draw upon a very wide variety of sources to bring together a sometimes spacey, sometimes beat-driven and playful pastiche of otherworldly music.
My designs have been heard Off Broadway and at various New York City venues including the 92nd St. Y Harkness Dance Center, Joyce SoHo, Japan Society, Performance Space 122, St. Ann's Warehouse, the World Financial Center Word of Mouth festival, and on Long Island at Robert Wilson's Watermill Center. My work for interactive media has been presented or produced by the American Museum of Natural History, the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space museum and Food & Water Watch. As an actor I've performed extensively at nationally-recognized experimental venues in New York City and Seattle, across the U.S., and throughout Europe.
I have taught Sound Design and/or served as an artist-in-residence at Whitman College, Abrons Arts Center, Watermill Center, HERE Arts Center, Marymount Manhattan College, Consolidated Works Arts Center, Begat Theatre Compagnie. I received my MFA in Acting from the University of Washington, and my BA in Theater from the University of Northern Iowa.
Sound Design Theory
My approach to Sound Design is uniquely interactive & rooted in dynamic, actor-based sensibilities, as this is where my formal training lies and it’s how I’ve spent the bulk of my career. I prefer to work with directors during their process in the rehearsal room, playing with performers – giving them impulses and listening to their responses – to find integrated textures & rhythms. I also prefer to mix my designs live, continuing this dynamic process with the performers throughout public performances. My designs focus on the active interaction between myself and the actor, between myself and my design, between my design and other design elements.
My process involves triggering sounds and manipulating sonic parameters in a live setting. Much as a flutist accompanies a light opera or a pianist accompanies a modern dance performance, so do I accompany actors in rehearsal - triggering atmospheric drones, musical interludes and representational effects. I will also manipulate parameters such as delay, reverb, chorus, etc. Through improvisations in rehearsal, I build a map and then play the design in performance.
Microphones placed on a stage and on an actor’s body are used, not to amplify, but to send sonic information to my computer. I process the sound, set it loose on the audience and performers, and become an active piece of the production. I essentially play a live score that uses actors’ voices and ambient sound from the stage as raw material.
In 2006 I created the Tiny Dance Film Series with choreographer Peter Kyle. The series consists of very short (usually between 60 & 180 seconds) and very small (always 320 x 240 pixels) dance films screened in a darkened kiosk for an audience of one. The result is a uniquely personal, interactive experience for the viewer, which evokes the nostalgia of an old-time penny arcade.
The project evolved out of guerrilla performances choreographed, rehearsed, and filmed in Lower Manhattan's public spaces. Peter, Holley, and I agree to follow two restrictions governing how the films are made: 1: The addition of a soundtrack is the only post-production allowed (all of the films are done in “one take,” without any picture editing after the shoot), and 2: No artificial light is used during the shoot.
This strict manifesto encourages us to concentrate on what we feel is useful in dance and on film: corporeal and mechanical magic. The tiny format and the disorienting venue in which the films are screened provide further possibility for both filmic and physical trickery.
As A Performer
My formal training is in acting, which I received at the University of Washington's Professional Actor Training Program in Seattle. Upon graduating, I joined the outdoor traveling theatre ensemble One World Theatre. In addition to my work with One World I appeared on three of Seattle's LORT stages: the Seattle Repertory, Intiman, and Seattle Children's Theatre. I also continued to shape and explore a unique, "whole-body" acting technique in avant garde productions at smaller venues such as On The Boards and The Empty Space. During this period I created and performed two solo performances. One of them, Hitchhiker, received New City Theatre's Best of the Fest award in their annual Actor's and Director's festival.
Upon arrival in New York City at the turn of the century, I began a performing and collaborating relationship with WaxFactory, a New York-based performance ensemble. In the spring of 2003, I took part in a creation workshop with WaxFactory and the French street theatre company, Begat, at their arts laboratory in Provence. I also appeared on several Off-Off-Broadway stages including the Ontological-Hysteric, Dance Theatre Workshop, HERE Arts Center (with Pacific Performance Project), SoHo Rep, Dixon Place, Cirque Boom, New Georges, and the Ohio Theatre (with Dallas's Undermain Theatre).
At the end of 2001 I joined Cirque du Soleil to portray the lead character in their popular spectacle, Saltimbanco. This engagement lasted one year and took me to the capitals of Europe where I played for a non-English speaking public of 2,500 every day. While I was in Europe I created my third solo performance, Eggbert Beeterbottom and His Magic Pants. This piece was developed during a residency with the Compagnie Begat. It received its premiere in February 2003 at the Au Bec Fin theatre in Paris.
In the fall of 2004 I collaborated with the international Lecoq-trained physical theatre company, TheatreRUN to create the play Russian Doll at Consolidated Works, the former contemporary arts center in Seattle. The play was awarded a 2004 Footlight Award by the Seattle Times newspaper and short-listed by Seattle's alternative weekly newspaper, The Stranger, as one of the best shows of 2004. Russian Doll went on to play at the 2005 Piccolo Spoletto festival in South Carolina.
In 2005 I appeared in Pacific Performance Project’s New York Premiere of Shogo Ohta’s masterwork, Mizu No Eki (The Water Station).
During the fall of 2006, I worked with The South Wing theatre company in residence at Robert Wilson's Watermill Center to create Death In Vacant Lot!, a rock opera based on Japanese director Shuji Terayama's 1972 masterpiece film “Death in the Field.” For this production I served as both actor and Sound Designer, incorporating an actor-generated foley soundscape, recorded sound effects, and a live band. The piece was produced by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
Locative Information
I grew up in Southeast Kansas, attended school in Iowa and Seattle, spent ten years in Brooklyn, and currently live and work in Washington, DC.
