Friday the Thirteenth in Phoenix

I'm sitting in a dark theater, building a sound design for a new play called "Junie B. Jones: Jingle Bells, Batman Smells". This is the second time I've designed in a fly house, which means the theater has lines that raise the scenery up and down. Matt is our man on the rail, which means he hauls in the scenic pieces using a counterweight system. Most of our time is spent bringing these pieces in and watching the actors move their desks on and off stage. My job is to try to time out the music with the scene changes, so that everything flows smoothly. I wrote some of the music myself, but the main piece of music I'm using is by my friend Barbara Lamb, a great fiddle player from Nashville. There are lots of bells and whistles, since the show has lots of flashbacks and dream sequences. We just started tech for Act 2 today, which has lots of burping sound effects from an imaginary toy called a "Squeeze-a-burp". That toy is a genius!