In short my time at American Players Theatre has been an absolute blast. I'm still in a slight state of shock because everything happened so fast.

To give brief narrative to how I came about being here, I need to start my story back in November of last year. I applied to American Players (in Spring Green, Wisconsin) for a Sound Assistant position last November on short notice. They had been hiring early. Originally, I did not get the job because the Production Manager thought that my school schedule would interfere with the season. Not so, as it turns out.

Anyway, early in July I got an unexpected call saying that the current Sound Assistant (or sound P.A., I'll get to what that means in a bit) had to leave because of personal reasons. The Production Manager, Michael Broh called me up asking if I could come in for an interview as soon as possible. Later that week, the 4th of July actually, I interviewed.

I was never wrecked to say the least because they ran me through the all of the duties I would be assigned... IF I got the job. I literally had about two seconds to sit down and explain what I could bring to the company then we toured the facility and met about 50 million people. At the end of the interview I was told I'd hear back in a few days.

I kept in contact and sent a thank you follow up and the next day I received the call to start the following tuesday. So, I packed up and flew off the hook and here I am.

When I got here I was immediately thrust into the full swing of things. With five shows already running(Three Up the Hill, our outdoor space and two in the Touchstone, our indoor space) and another three in rehearsal my "training"needed to be fast an furious. I shadowed the fellow I was replacing for the first week learning the ins and outs of my position, then I was on my own.

The bulk of what I had to learn was the way in which the scenic units had to be put together (facilitated by the Deck Chief, one of my bosses). This is because we run in repertory. So I had to learn where to put scenic units when the Production Assistants (P.A.'s) took them out of storage in our "clubhouse," where to make bolts, bent nails, stage screws, coffin locks what order to take them out in and what order to pack them back into the the storage bays. The shows I had to learn Up the Hill were Two Gentlemen of Verona (2gents), Too Many Husbands (husbands) and Hamlet. In the Touchstone I had to learn Molly Sweeney and Dickens in America. The difficult part of this is being fast, safe and efficient. This is especially important because changeover between shows often happens in about an hour, with a performance of one show then taking down then immediately putting up another with the performance directly afterwards. In addition to all of that we had rehearsal scenery for All My Sons (sons) and Antony and Cleopatra (A&C) and eventually sets that we had to learn from the scene shop staff and Technical Director (another boss).

This was on top of my show assignments for being run crew during the performances. I had two starting out. I run the soundboard for Too Many Husbands and am on run crew for Molly Sweeney. I would also be put on run crew for Antony and Cleopatra later as well.

My show responsibilities for sound are facilitated by the Sound Engineer and Stage Manager, two of my other bosses. It was relatively easy process to learn as the show was out of tech and the show file (run in Qlab) was pretty solid already. However, learning the overall system was a tad tricky as I wasn't accustomed to it and had 2 performances before I was left alone with it. Essentially I had to diagram it's signal path from source to speakers to understand. We run Qlab3 which was somewhat familiar but a newer version of software than I'm used to. We run that into a Yamaha DM100 digital mixer that is linked to Qlab through MIDI controls (also a new way of running things for me). This runs to a MOTU and various other signal processors in a rack, and wireless receivers for mics. This then runs to 8 speakers in the house along with the capability of having more satellite speakers.

I didn't have many problems picking up the system but one specifically I learned from was during performance I couldn't get a satellite just offstage right to work (even though I had it during sound check). It turns out there were two hard patch panels that had gotten switched that I hadn't been made aware of. We did manage to right the problem because I followed the signal path and found that somewhere between the amp and the speaker the path wasn't connecting, I just didn't know where.

During my run crew positions (which are both in touchstone) I am in charge of getting the scenic elements inspected and ready for performance, getting props in order, supervising actors' needs and being ready to oversee any technical difficulties with lights or sound. The lights and sound necessity comes from the fact that the stage manager runs both during the show. Other duties include cleaning the stage floor, helping stage management improve run sheets and whatever else anyone needs me to do.

 A quick an amusing anecdote about doing what people need us to do. My closest co-workers and I are commonly referred to as the Production Assistants, or as we like to referrer to ourselves as, The Practically Anythings.

Another thing I'll quickly touch on was the Tech process. I wasn't around for the bulk of it, save for the smaller second rep A&C tech. Essentially it was just to flesh out the smoothness of transitions of what needed to happen and to see was was arbitrary. I did however get be on standby to the Sound Designer Sarah Pickett should she need anything, which was really fantastic. Most of my duties lay with manipulating a sail and organizing props. One interesting aspect of the show was the planned life blank gun shot that I had to perform. One character, Enobarbus kills himself and they wanted a definitive end. The way that was preferred by the Director (Kate Buckley) instead of a sound cue was the live shot. I was trained on how to do that by Jen Trieloff (Props Director). After the first few attempts it was concluded that the sound was not quite consistent enough so we tried the a recorded shot. We eventually cut the sound entirely.

I'm sure there is plenty I've missed as I'm trying to recall a month in a single post.

One of the single discoveries I think it's of paramount importance to mention is the delicacy that it has required to come into this large of a production (really any size production) on such short notice. I've never tried to pass myself off as a "replacement," I'm simply newer than everyone else and I'm trying to add my own flavor to my nitché. I'm fresh eyes sometimes and other times I'm simply learning. More than anywhere I've been before I think that the people are what make this place work. We all work strange hours at strenuous paces and tensions can run high sometimes but we persevere. Everyone here has helped to make a welcoming environment that I'm quickly adapting to.

So a gigantic thank you to everyone who's made this experience possible, it's been more than a dream come true. While it's not exactly what I expected it'd be, it is wonderful on so many levels that I had no appreciation for previously.

Thanks again,

John

Here are a quick link to the APT homepage if there is anything you'd like more reference for, there are also blogs of other people if you explore too:

http://americanplayers.org/

Also, I'll be adding some production photos soon to try to give some reference for the changeovers I'm part of.