Dead Man's Cellphone // GFX + SFX Designer
Buffalo Laboratory Theatre - Fall 2013
In DMC, the show's narrative centers around (naturally) the cell phone of a man whom has recently past, as it is found, and used, by our lead protagonist. We decided to augment the story progression by building a large smartphone at stage center, and projecting apps and video calls onto the screen over the course of the show Perhaps my favorite element I included (and last minute brain storm) was the fact that over the course of the show, the battery slowly goes down on the screen, culminating in the phone shutting down in the final scenes. The amount of life left in the show directly tied to the life in the cellphone of a dead man.
"The set is bare-bones, but there is near-genius work by BLT tech phenom Steven Fox, designer of a huge and central cellphone, complete with working icons and a variety of sounds and videos that speed “Dead Man’s Cell Phone” along..." --Ted Hadley, BUFFALO NEWS
Standing on my Knees // GFX + SFX Designer
Buffalo Laboratory Theatre - Spring 2011
For Standing on my Knees we wanted the stage to almost represent a space inside the mind of the main character (the schizophrenia battling poet, Catherine). To accomplish this end I installed 2 primary means of effects. For one, I adhered multiple computer speakers to random seats throughout the audience space (the show was presented on stage in a small scale 'theatre in the round' format). This allowed me to pipe sound-clips, from distorted character voices to ambient music, directly into any of 3 quadrants of the the theatre space, rising from the unsuspecting audience's feet. Second, I hung a projector facing downward high above the audience's heads, this allowed us to project animated text and other graphical effects directly onto the stage floor, simulating the thought process of the poet, and becoming more and more abstract as the play approaches climax.
"BLT superbly integrates light, sound and special effects. Much of it is the work of Steven Fox, who, along with [director] Doherty, underscores [the main character's] ills with the pessimistic music of Bela Bartok and the dissonant sounds of John Cage." --Ted Hadley, BUFFALO NEWS
Terra Nova // GFX + SFX Designer
Buffalo Laboratory Theatre - Fall 2010
Terra Nova is the true story of a group of ill-fated British explorers, lead by Robert Scott, with their eyes set firmly on the ultimate prize of being the first men ever to plant their country's flag at the south pole. In staging this play we wished to convey the larger than life aura surrounding such an attempt, and so as opposed to creating a clean snow-white stage to represent the Antarctic and leaving it at that, we used the white fabric draped across the stage as a canvas to paint a multitude of colorful animated auroras, vintage photographs and swirling star maps. These moving images enveloped the actors and even bled off the stage and onto the walls of the auditorium (via a triumvirate of projectors) presenting the tale of Scott and his doomed compatriots in the grandest way possible.
Indivisible // GFX + SFX Designer
Buffalo Laboratory Theatre - Fall 2011
Indivisible finds protagonist Adam, and by extension the audience, dropped without explanation into a sterile clinical, yet technology infused, environment not unlike that of Valve's 2007 videogame Portal. In building this world on stage we erected what would seem at first to be a minimalist set comprised of 3 flat white walls and 4 cots covered in white linen. As the story progresses however, we discover that one of the walls in question is actually a large screen (via projection) capable of communicating information to the participants in the bizarre experiment. From advertisements, to home movie clips, to strange pre-recorded lessons in patriotic morality, the room itself in some ways becomes both a medium of storytelling, as well as a character in the sometimes horrifying world of the play.
