The Journey to Opening Night

I’ll admit it: I’ve had a crush on the work by Christi Stewart-Brown for twenty years now. It was her work that introduced me to fringe theater. I got to see most of her plays when I lived in Washington, DC, except for The Gene Pool, which premiered after I moved to Seattle.

When I finally read the play a few years ago, I knew immediately I wanted to direct it. It spoke to me on many levels; I had to make it happen. I approached several theatres and held a reading of the play to gauge interest. A fringe company in Seattle passed because the play was deemed “too normal”, while a small theater in the suburbs passed because they were alarmed the women actually kissed on stage. It wasn’t that they were lesbians, but did they really have to show it?

I realized then, that the most certain way for me to direct The Gene Pool would be to produce it myself. After stalling for a couple of years, I was finally propelled to follow through and get it done after dinner and conversation with a friend. Luckily, I found myself surrounded by friends and family that believed not only in me, but in this excellent play and what it had to say. Thus, Arouet was born.

The casting of the show was something else. We had an astonishing number of talented people at callbacks—I could have cast the show several times over. Decisions were made, and now, after four weeks of very intense, and fun rehearsals I find it impossible to think of anyone else in these parts.

I was lucky to secure an excellent design team. A mutual friend of the author and mine designed the set (the only person I know who saw the original production); costumes and lights were designed by friends willing to jump in and work with me for little budget; a stage manager with whom I’d worked before; and an assistant director who is one of my best friends and with whom I have an excellent working relationship—truly my right hand in this process.

And now, here we are, less than a week until opening night. I look forward to sharing with you this next part of the journey.

Sound Design for “The Gene Pool”

I have a pretty extensive sound library, but I ran into a roadblock when creating the motorcycle effects for The Gene Pool: all of my field recordings were of motorcycles coming or going, and therefor they always incorporated the doppler effect, rendering most of my motorcycle effects useless. I needed sustained motorcycle sounds to authentically coincide with the dialog and staging.

Thanks to some ducking compressors and a library created by Colin Hart, I was able to create some awesome sound effects for the show.

Here is a sample of his field work:

Yamaha R1 Blog Demo by Colin Hart

I really appreciate the lengths that Colin Hart went to in order to record a consistently high quality soundset. I’m really impressed with his effort and grateful for his contribution to this show.

For the record, I wouldn’t have the nerve to do this, I would worry too much:

We had 2 Sanken Cubs on the bike. One up front next to the top of the gas tank, and the other next to the license plate. Next, we had a Shure SM57 attached next to the other side of the license plate, facing down towards the exhaust. Last, we had a Neumann KMR81i attached next to the swing arm, facing back towards the exhaust.

[box]J.S. Epperson is the sound designer for The Gene Pool. He has previously created sound and voice over work for Arouet, Arts West, Redwood Theatre and Theatre 9/12. You can read a clever paragraph or two about Epperson on the Cast and Crew page or you can visit his website. Read some fabulously nerdy blog posts about Arouet sound design.[/box]

The Gene Pool Photos

Kyle Johnson, Colleen Carey and Amelia Meckler in "The Gene Pool", photo by Michael Brunk / nwlens.com

We’ve just started rehearsing The Gene Pool and Michael Brunk stopped by to take some promotional stills of our family of actors.

A high resolution photo set is available on Flickr

Frankie & Johnny Photo Gallery

On the night before we opened Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, our pal Michael Brunk stopped by to take some photos of Meredith and Greg.

A high resolution photo set is available on Flickr