Interview: Todd Mack Reischman

RESIDENT SOUND DESIGNER

TODD MACK REISCHMAN

TODD HAS DESIGNED SOUND FOR NEARLY 100 IRT PRODUCTIONS IN HIS 20 SEASONS AS RESIDENT SOUND DESIGNER. AMONG HIS FAVORITES ARE THE PIANO LESSON, MACBETH, FINDING HOME, ROMEO & JULIET, NOISES OFF, AND 12 ANGRY MEN. IN 2018, TODD WAS AWARDED AN EMMY FOR HIS SOUND DESIGN ON THE WFYI BROADCAST VERSION OF IRT’S FINDING HOME—INDIANA AT 200.

WHERE ARE YOU FROM? I was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and lived there for eight days. We moved to Stillwater, Oklahoma, because my dad went to grad school at OSU. He eventually worked for the Department of Defense, so I grew up in San Diego and northern Virginia.

HOW DID YOU FIRST GET INTERESTED IN THEATRE? My elementary school did Oklahoma!, and I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. I wanted to be in it, but you had to be in at least fifth grade. The next year I played Prince Chulalongkorn in The King and I, and the year after that I played Frank Butler in Annie Get Your Gun. I fancied being an actor as a kid; I did it all through high school, but then I needed to work. I also learned that I really sucked at auditioning.

HOW DID YOU BECOME INTERESTED IN MUSIC? When I was 10 I started playing drums. When I was a freshman in high school I learned to play the guitar, and eventually I was in a band called Paradise. Yeah, very eighties. But when I graduated from high school we were doing pretty well, we had a recording contract. We recorded a five-song demo, and a couple of our songs were used in a program that toured high schools for Mothers Against Drunk Driving. We thought we were going to go somewhere, but we broke up pretty quickly.

Meanwhile I now had a son to raise. I moved back to San Diego and began to work in food service. I managed some kitchens, and I even ended up with a chef title at one place. Then some time in the early nineties I accidentally got a part in a play. I happened to drive by the Grove Playhouse, and I walked in and volunteered. They needed someone to do sound, but then one of the actors dropped out, so I ended up doing this small part. At the end of the run, I went to every theatre in San Diego looking for work, and I ended up on the tech crew at San Diego Rep.

HOW DID YOU LEARN THE ART OF SOUND DESIGN? My folks had great taste in music, so I grew up listening to different kinds of music, and I loved it. What music did to the body and the soul fascinated me from a very early age. I tinkered with our stereo equipment. I wanted to learn how to make it more powerful, I wanted to learn how to add more speakers in different places—all completely coincidental to what I ended up doing for a living. When I started playing the

guitar, I started writing and recording stuff, and I figured out ways to overdub things. I toyed a lot with home audio equipment. Then being in a band, I learned all about amps and microphones, so all that stuff was second nature to me. I was fascinated with recording arts, I was fascinated with music, I was fascinated with theatre. When I found my way into an electrics overhire at San Diego Rep, I was totally pumped.

It was kind of a trial by fire, but I busted my ass figuring out how to do it. I read a bunch of books. I spent a lot of late nights at the theatre figuring out the buttons and knobs. I was already behind the console, and they were bringing in a new show every week. That summer the audio master left to do a show at La Jolla. So for three months I was the interim audio master, which I really wasn’t qualified for, but I learned by doing. We did 15 productions in 17 weeks. By the end of that summer, I knew I could do anything. I ended up head of the department, and then I spent two seasons as resident sound designer.

HOW DID YOU GET TO THE IRT? When my son was 8, he moved to Missouri to be with his mom. I wanted to be closer to him. I was sending out lots of resumes, but when I interviewed at IRT, there were several things that drew me. One, the proximity to my son. Another, I had felt for several years that every day I woke up in a pile of sweaty body mics; so the fact that IRT did not do a lot of musicals was very appealing. And the longevity of the IRT staff was a key element. There are people who have worked here for decades. That’s impressive. In my six years at San Diego Rep I think I saw nine marketing managers—which starts to make things confusing. And now it’s my 20th season here.

WHAT DOES YOUR JOB AS RESIDENT SOUND DESIGNER ENTAIL? Sound design is a way to aurally support the visual story telling on stage, in ways that can be intrusive or very subtle. It is the magnificently magical invisible design element. My job is to design shows when they are assigned to me, and to be the head of the audio-video department. As head of the department, I manage the budget, the labor, and the inventory, and facilitate the designer’s artistic vision.

When I’m designing a show, I read the script. I look for sound, where sound lives in the story. That means both necessary sounds like phones and doorbells, and possible sounds like musical underscoring. At the IRT, we have a concept meeting with all the designers and the director together, and we collaborate. Together, we come up with a plan. There’s research, and figuring out different versions of things to present to the director, so they can hear what you are thinking about and make choices. When it’s time for rehearsals, you have to figure out what the actors and the director need in rehearsal. Some shows need nothing at that point, some shows that’s half the design. Then we get to tech. We do it, and then we fiddle with it. And then we do it, and then we fiddle with it. If there was never an opening night, we would never stop working on shows.

If a show is more about amplification, such as a musical, that requires a completely different set of skills. This is when live audio engineering comes into play. Where do the actors need to hear things? How are we going to hear the actors? Where is the band going to be and how are we going to hear them, and how is the band going to hear the actors and how are the actors going to hear the band? So that’s building a whole live sound system, and that’s a lot of fun. But in most IRT shows, we put a microphone on an actor to create a sound affect: not because we can’t hear them, but because we want to hear them differently.

HOW DOES YOUR WORK AS A MUSICIAN AND SOUND DESIGNER FEED YOUR HEART? I found the career I have by pursuing the things that I have the most passion for: theatre and music. Play with gear, also. All of that naturally culminated when I got into theatre, and I found that I can be artistic, I can write music, I can be in a theatre, and they pay me for it.

I cry when I work with young performers and their parents applaud at the end of the show. I get excited when I meet new young people—whether that’s children or college students—who are excited about theatre. That makes me feel like I’m contributing. I love that I work in a place that exposes people to theatre who might not otherwise get to see it. That’s a tremendous philanthropic thing for me to be a part of. I love playing music with other people in live situations. It’s soothing to the soul and creates positive energy. Those things I feel within my body, within my physiological being, and it turns me on.