Spotlight on Sound Designer Bryce Page

Krista I first started working with Bryce when he was an undergraduate student at Florida State Univeristy. As a transfer student from the University of South Florida, Bryce settled into life at FSU quickly. After getting to know Bryce, I invited him to take part in a project that would become the launching pad for Endstation.

The project was simply titled “The Guernica Project” and we invited ten performers (Bryce included) to create a performance using plastiques and other extensive, movement-based techniques. The production faced several challenges from the its inception: performance space shortages, conflicts with other productions, a limited budget and a show featuring extensive music with no sound designer. In a production meeting, the sound needs were brought up and, noting that he had a little experience with recording music and editing, Bryce volunteered. And so began Bryce’s sound design career.

Bryce was invited to observe a workshop of a project that Krista and I were working on called Hello! No Future? that summer as part of the Blue Ridge Project just before his senior year. This project took the character from Shakespeare's Macbeth and Georg Buchner's Woyzeck and put them at an New Year's Eve office party in 2006. The research done during that summer session would later reappear in a reading of the unfinished script presented the following fall at FSU’s Lab Theatre.

Bryce left stage management after the fall semester to pursue sound design and rounded out his senior year with designs for Macbeth, Troilius & Cressida, and Ubu Does America. After applying to many fields and many theatres, Bryce chose a sound internship with The Shakespeare Theatre Company of Washington, DC as his next step.


During his ten months with the company he served as a sound board operator for every production in the Lansburgh Theatre. He was an assistant to the sound designer for both Richard III and Titus Andronicus, while some of his guitar work was featured in Richard III and Hamlet. While an intern, he designed three shows: School for Wives (produced by Shakespeare Theatre), Endgame (Sweet Briar College), and Marisol (Lynchburgh College). In any spare time, Bryce traveled to the central Virginia area to promote Endstation and continue collaboration with me. When the internship ended, Bryce remained in Washington as an alternate sound board operator, run crew member and house manager until the Capital Fringe Festival, where he designed for Endstation, The Tell-Tale Heart and the Mind of Poe, and an independent production for Atlas Theatre, One in Two.

Most recently, Bryce collaborated with me on A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Theatre Jacksonville. Bryce now lives in Tampa, Florida and he moves into creating the designs for The Bluest Water. I am very excited with what Bryce is playing with. He is working with a blues guitar that runs through out the show, coupled with other sounds and instruments. In discussing the blues guitar, we liked the image it evokes. It is like someone dragging something heavy through the mud. This felt right for the show.

You can check out Bryce's website that is full of Bryce' art work, writing and music. Check it out!

http://web.mac.com/brycepage/Welcome_to_Bryce/Home.html

Geoffrey Kershner
Endstation Blogger and Artistic Director