For Mt. Gretna’s eponymous summer theater, under the leadership of Will Stutts, I designed sound for three productions and stage managed two of them. On my way north to Monmouth two years later, I stopped in and contributed a sound design for their production of Moonlight & Magnolias.
Groucho, A Life in Revue was a lively three-person production which required a good deal of sound reinforcement via vintage recordings, piano rolls, and sound effects. I recorded voiceovers for the voices from Groucho’s memories, re-created the sounds of important events in Groucho’s life, and even simulated the piano for Chico.
Below: Stephen Speise as Groucho at the opening of Groucho: A Life in Revue.
Amadeus is, of course, a play about music. Okay, it’s also a play about jealousy, rivalries, and a certain impertinent prodigy. The music is, however, a very important part of the tapestry. Salieri, the preeminent composer in Emperor Joseph II’s court, first befriends and then betrays the young Mozart. The play is presented as a flashback, with Salieri attempting to assuage his guilty conscience. A guilty conscience that manifests in auditory hallucinations.
Below: Rew as Salieri’s guilty conscience at the opening of Amadeus.
Below: Mozart transforms Salieri’s modest theme in Amadeus.
One of the interesting things about this show…about this season, in fact, is that despite two shows in which a piano is played, we had no actors who could play the piano at the time. I put together the piano cues for Groucho and Amadeus out of piano samples.
Amadeus at Gretna Theater 2004.
Following Amadeus, we staged Larry Shue’s anti-xenophobia comedy The Foreigner. In it, a terribly shy Englishman is brought to Georgia where he masquerades as an exotic foreigner who can’t speak English, to the delight of the household and annoyance of the local KKK. Hilarity ensues. The script called for rain and an explosion, which I happily provided, as well as vehicular sound effects and transitions.
Terry Sneed, Terry Browne, Rob Ventre and Rita McGinty in The Foreigner.