BWW Blog: Cheyenne Dalton - 580 Miles

I'm sure everyone knows the challenges that come with designing any given show - there's the actual design, the communication of the design, the (most-likely) compromise of the design, public relations, paperwork, implementation of the design, dry tech, cue to cue, 10 out of 12, dress rehearsals, previews... and then opening night. Can you imagine not being at the theatre to work on your show, not being able to talk to other designers in person, not being there to see or hear how your design was affecting the show? I can.

I wasn't exactly sure what I was getting into when I was asked to be the assistant Sound Designer for the Orlando Repertory Theatre's The Little Mermaid. I knew what being an assistant Sound Designer meant - paperwork, handfuls of sound effects, odds and ends of the design - because, after all, I have been a Sound Designer and an assistant Sound Designer before. But I didn't know how being in Scottsboro, Alabama was going to work out when the show was almost 600 miles away.

In theatre, all designers and the director must be on the same terms with the ideas that they each individually have. The Sound Designer, lighting designer, set designer, and costume designer must all collaborate to achieve the overall meaning of the play, and the best way to do that is to have technical design meetings. The meetings are started with the text, and each designer must respond in some way to the text to determine what must be accomplished throughout the production process. In the first meeting, the designers come in with a blank slate, and minimal ideas to share. Each meeting after that "crafts the world" of which the actors and characters live in, including music scores, lighting elements, costumes, and the set around them.

Anthony Narciso, the Sound Designer who I worked with on two shows previously at Auburn University, asked me to be his assistant for this show. The Little Mermaid opened July 22, and I worked periodically on it from the end of May until the week before it opened. I made a mic plot, a sound cue sheet, I pulled and made a dozen sound effects. It was just as normal as any other show I've done, except I couldn't be there to see the process unfold. Besides receiving phone videos with mediocre sound quality, I couldn't really tell how well the sound effects folded in with the show.

I am a very sentimental person, and to not be able to see a show I fell in love with making sound effects for was at the very least upsetting. It's not very common, after all, that your director wants a sound effect that is the "splashiest of splashes," which was probably the most fun sound I've ever crafted. With all this said, working on a show I never actually had the fortune of seeing was worth it.