5/12 – 5/28 | “I Carry Your Heart With Me” Opens at Third Avenue Playworks (Sturgeon Bay, WI) as part of the World Premiere Wisconsin Festival!

I CARRY YOUR HEART WITH ME
a new one woman show
at Third Avenue Playworks (Sturgeon Bay, WI)

BY JENNIFER BLACKMER
feat. Karen Estrada as ‘Esther’
directed by Jacob Janssen

MAY 10 – 28, 2023

Wednesday, May 10: Pay-What-You-Will Preview
Thursday, May 11: Final Preview
Friday, May 12: Opening Night

Wednesday – Saturday evenings at 7:30pm
Friday matinee May 19th at 2:00pm
Sunday matinees at 2:00pm

A world premiere!

Esther Shannon (*Karen Estrada) is a government stenographer working for the US Air Force during the tempestuous Vietnam War. Lonely, conflicted, and haunted by voices from her past, Esther finds herself smack dab in the middle of a troubling investigation.

With plenty of twists and turns along the way, Jennifer Blackmer’s taut, suspenseful mystery packs a real emotional wallop at the end. This new play will be presented as part of World Premiere Wisconsin, an inaugural and ambitious statewide festival celebrating original works.

I CARRY YOUR HEART WITH ME is part of World Premiere Wisconsin, a statewide festival celebrating new plays and musicals from March 1 – June 30, 2023, presented by the Ten Chimneys Foundation. To learn more visit www.worldpremierewisconsin.com.

For More info on Jennifer Blackmer and Karen Estrada, please visit TAP’s website: https://thirdavenueplayworks.org/i-carry-your-heart-with-me/

ARTIST TEAM

Director: Jacob Janssen
Production Stage Manager: Kelsey York*
Set Design: Alex Polzin
Costume Design: Kärin Kopischke**
Lighting Design: Colin Gawronski
Sound Design: Brian Grimm

** denotes union members


Community Partner Program – Door County Farm for Vets

TAP has founded a wonderful tradition of partnering with local community organizations on each show of their season. All of the ticket sales from the pay-what-you-will preview show goes directly to the community partner. In this case it is Door County Farm for Vets, and truly needed and amazing organization whose mission is to eradicate veteran suicides through farming. I love this so much. What a needed cause and what a fantastic approach.

Since 9/11 we’ve lost roughly 5 times as many veterans to suicide than we have in combat. It is massive problem that needs to be tackled and supported!

From DC Farm for Vets website:

DC Farm for Vets is a rehabilitation farm that provides education and services to Veterans entering into agriculture. This service includes several different programs.  We have an available community gardening program along with scheduled training tailored to the specific time of the growing season. Our training program entails regenerative agriculture, sustainable chemical free produce production, livestock, and cherry and apple orchards.  We believe in Growing while Healing. 

The specific objectives and purpose of this organization is to work towards the elimination of veteran suicide.  We accomplish this through teaching skills of sustainability and consumption of nutrient dense produce and livestock.  Being able to grow your own food gives you a sense of control over your life and it is incredibly rewarding. Every dollar that gets donated to DC farm for Vets we donate back to our veterans or the community giving our veterans the opportunity to serve something bigger than themselves once again.  

Here’s how you can support:
https://www.dcfarmforvets.org/visit
https://www.dcfarmforvets.org/get-involved


Notes on the Sound Design and Score

“I Carry Your Heart With Me” Poem Cue (Curtain Bow) by Brian Grimm (feat. Emma Cifrino)

As always, there is the potential for some spoilers when talking about my design for the show, so reader beware! I’ll be honest, this was maybe the most difficult play and stressful Tech process that I’ve been through. Most of the time I show up to Tech with all of my cues composed, recorded and mixed – already arranged in my Qlab session with best guesses at timings and fades. But this show was a tough nut to crack. I spent 3 weeks working on melodic themes for the different characters and emotional moments. I would compose a theme and develop it into a cue, only to listen back to the recording while reading the script and thinking… hmmm – that’s not quite right. I think this is the most material I’ve ever developed and then immediately scrapped during the rehearsal and design process for a show.

It took me 3 weeks to realize that the reason all of my melodic material did not feel right, is that the character Esther is the melody! Because it is a one woman show, I needed to sink further into the background; purely be the accompaniment support and let Esther drive the show, let her be the melody. It was soooo different than doing even a two actor show. That is something I did not anticipate.

So the weekend before Tech, I made a HUGE design pivot and developed the idea of recording many variations of long tones. It was a tricky assignment – the director Jacob made it clear that we’d probably want sound under most of the show, but it couldn’t be melodic, and it couldn’t be rhythmic… hence the tones. But it made sense because we had the concept of there being fluorescent light tones for half of the play’s design – and these musical tones could be the color of the storytelling world outside of those fluorescent and cold deposition spaces.

On that Sunday, Monday and Tuesday before Tech (starting Wednesday) – I recorded Emma Cifrino on viola, Greg Smith on clarinet and bass clarinet, and myself on cello and guqin zither (individually) running through “the gauntlet” of tones. I’ve done this before on my own, it’s intense, so I definitely understood the process and what I was asking of these fine instrumentalists. I’m so glad Emma and Greg were down to complete this process. It wasn’t random notes, I created a scale built out of all of the notes needed for each chord progression and melody that I had developed throughout the whole process (even if I thought we were scrapping it). We went one note at a time, recording 5 styles of that note. Long straight tone, no vibrato. Long tone with vibrato. Crescendo to a sting. Sforzando to diminuendo. And my favorite, wobbly oscillating pressure dynamic pulsing long tones! Greg was a total champ, because we ran through the whole process on Clarinet, and then picked up the Bass Clarinet and said… ok here we go again. And then he went on to perform Carmina Burana with the Madison Symphony Orchestra later that evening … WOW!!

I made sure to have every player record every melodic theme as well, just so I had my bases covered for Tech. Even just my melodic and tones libraries were quite extensive for this show – because I knew I’d just have to build most of the cues on the spot. Jacob and I really couldn’t judge what would feel right until we were in the room and tried things out. So it was a slow, brutal process to build cues on the spot, and not at all my ideal scenario. Let’s just say there were a number of all nighters that needed to happen. This is something I try to avoid at all costs these days (by being over prepared), but that just shows you how different this show was and how much needed to be built, created or refined even outside of tech hours.

Besides the melodic and chord tone libraries, I had built up an even deeper library of Military Sounds from the Vietnam war including AK-47s, Air Bombers, Rocket Launchers, and very importantly the Huey Combat Helicopter. I also recorded the forced air heat sound from my vents at home, and the intensely loud buzzing of each fluorescent light in my basement. From these fluorescents and vent sounds I created many variations of tone clusters and chords that created a framework for the sonic tonal texture of the show (which I then replicated with the acoustic instruments).

Throughout the show, you’ll hear the Huey Helicopter as an intense heartbeat. You’ll hear Air Bomb drops and Rocket Launchers as a forced air vent rattling in the corner. You’ll hear Bass Clarinet as the persistent buzzing of the deposition room fluorescent lights. You’ll hear musical themes for the Military, and each individual character in the show. You’ll hear the USA’s actual Military Jazz Band playing dance party music. You’ll even hear clapping from a 1960’s video of people applauding for the IBM Selectric II World Champion Typist who could type 180 words per minute (deep cut!)!! You’ll also hear the iconic music sounds of the 1960’s! My absolute favorite era for popular music! This was one of the huge discoveries that Jacob and I made late at night trying to crack the code of this play. It’s been so much fun to revisit the music of that era, the music I grew up on. If you like this music of the late 60’s, you’ll enjoy the preshow!

Honestly, I felt like I came prepared for 4 different versions of this play, and none of those versions was the show we ended up doing!! So this one was a big learning process for me and I’m glad I had everyone record those melodic themes, because we ended up using most of them! Thank you to the whole production team, Karen, and Jacob for your patience with me on this tech. I know it was stressful for you too, and I appreciate your grace to let me figure out each cue on the spot.

The final two music cues in the show are two of the best cues I think I’ve ever composed and produced. I’m really happy with how those turned out (you can hear the “Poem Cue” above).


Special Shout Outs

In the end, the true star of this show is Karen Estrada who is absolutely fabulous in this piece of 1,000 transitions and micro-moments. I think audiences will love the performance she gives in this show. What a feat to memorize and perform and hour long show alone, all by yourself. So many lines!!! I could never, ever, ever do that. This performance really highlights Karen’s wide range as an actress. Not only that but she kept us all laughing deep belly laughs throughout tech, which I absolutely needed to keep me going! I hope you can come see the amazing work that Karen has put into this show!!

The other star of this show is Colin Gawronski‘s light design and how it interplays with the beautiful scrim paint job by Alex Polzin. The combo of those two elements is GORGEOUS. It’s like a watercolor painting and I love it. It’s worth coming to this show just to see the different worlds that Colin and Alex have created together with their designs.

Congratulation on the World Premiere to playwright Jennifer Blackmer and for building such a dynamic world for us to play in. It is a whirlwind of a play, and there is just so much contrast and emotion to dive into. I want to know more about her mother, who is the inspiration for the stenographer character Esther who is transcribing all of the Vietnam non-com depositions. I’m glad I could be a part of your premiere!

Thank you Thank you Thank you to Emma Cifrino (viola) and Greg Smith (clarinets) for performing and recording on this score!!! I love how both of your instruments support the story and add color to this world. The recordings turned out great and you both killed it in the studio sessions!


[Sold Out!] Opening Night/Butler Night for “Two Mile Hollow” by Leah Nanako Winkler at Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis!!

It’s a sold out Opening Night for “Two Mile Hollow”!! It’ll also be a special night where we celebrate the Butler University Theatre department as the playwright Leah, the director Mikael, and the sound designer (myself) are all Butler alums! What a treat that we were classmates and friends together at BU and now get to collaborate professionally all these years later! I look forward to seeing all of the Butler folks tonight and celebrating the fantastic work of both the production team and the incredible cast of this show.

I was a total beep-boop-beep-ding-dong and forgot to take any photos of the beautiful set by Inseung Park during tech, so I’ll have to wait until the production photos come out to share them with you. I will be making a follow up post for the run with some samples of my original score, photos and more.

Mary, Blythe and Christopher Donnelly on the stairs of Two Mile Hollow. 📸 @_toneyc_

Two Mile Hollow
by Leah Nanako Winkler, directed by Mikael Burke
runs March 30th through April 30th
at the Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis, IN

Get your tickets now starting at $25, and students can use the promo code “student15” for discounted tickets at only $15. See you there!
Tix >> https://www.phoenixtheatre.org/buy-tickets

From Phoenix Theatre
Don’t miss out on the hilarious comedy, TWO MILE HOLLOW, opening this weekend at the Phoenix Theatre! With beautiful blonde wigs and spectacular costumes, Eddie Dean*, Jay Fuqua, Paige Elisse, Arianne Villareal*, and Milicent Wright* will have you laughing all night. This play features actors of color playing wealthy white characters in a witty and entertaining satire by Leah Nanako Winkler. This play, which is directed by Mikael Burke, is our final production of the 2022/2023 season!

*Denotes a member of Actors’ Equity Association

Closing Weekend for “The Wanderers” at The Overture Center!

Presented by Forward Theater Company
Thursday, September 8th through Sunday, September 25th (TICKETS)
@ The Overture Center for the Arts Playhouse Theater (Madison, WI)

a play by Anna Ziegler
Directed by Mikael Burke (Chicago)
Wisconsin Premiere!

Esther and Schmuli are young Orthodox Jews whose future is written in scripture. Abe and Sophie believe they can write their own destiny. On the surface, these two couples couldn’t seem more different. But when a Hollywood actress upends Abe’s world, the hidden connections between all of them start to appear. This funny and mysterious drama explores the question of whether happiness lies in what we have, or on the road not taken.


“As perfect a piece of theater as I’ve seen in many years. The script by Anna Ziegler is a revelation, touching on family truths, marriage, and personal histories…Go see this show. It’s magnificent.”
– DC Theatre Scene

Buy Tickets here

With Cassandra Bissell, Elyse Edelman, Alanna Lovely, Paris Hunter Paul, Greg Pragel

Featuring Special Local Guest Musicians YID VICIOUS Klezmer Ensemble!

Scenic Designer: Sarah Ross
Lighting Designer: Brad Toberman
Costume Designer: Karen Brown-Larimore
Sound Designer/Composer: Brian Grimm
Props Master: Pam Miles
Technical Director: Kevin Zimmer
Stage Manager: Kira Neighbors
Asst. Stage Manager: Abbi Hess


I had such a blast recording music with Madison’s own Yid Vicious Klezmer Ensemble for the score of “The Wanderers” by Anna Ziegler! I’m so honored to have collaborated with such fine musicians & friends and can’t wait for you to hear their beautiful playing in this production!

Pictured members of Yid Vicious:
Matt Appleby – guitar
Kia Karlen – accordion & horn
Geoff Brady – vibraphone
Greg Smith – flutes & clarinets

Also pictured:
Brian Grimm – composer, cello at the playhouse theater
Zelda Brethauer – sleeping studio assistant


Opening Night for The Magnolia Ballet by Terry Guest! designer’s notes on score and sound

Cast Pictured Left to Right: Sheldon D. Brown, Terry Guest, Wardell Julius Clark

The Magnolia Ballet
Written by Terry Guest
Directed by Mikael Burke
Produced by About Face Theatre
5/20/22 – 6/11/22 @ The Den Theatre, Chicago IL
Tickets and Info: https://aboutfacetheatre.com/show/the-magnolia-ballet/

Warning sound design and music cue spoilers ahead!

This is a ghost story in the swamps of Georgia, USA. To set the scene of this world, playwright Terry Guest has included in his script the most rich environment descriptions that I’ve ever seen. The stage directions for the sounds of this world were so engaging, that I kept forgetting the audience wasn’t going to get to hear these wonderful words! Infact, it was my job to make the audience know and feel what Terry had written in the script through sound design. A tall order for this play. There are many animal sounds and swamp descriptions throughout, the environment is loud, dangerous and ever present. About half the time you’ll be hearing real swamp sounds and the other half of the time you’ll hear swamp sounds that I’ve created on musical instruments such as the cello and pipa lute. There are many different Pipa (Chinese lute) sounds embedded throughout the play which emulate bugs, insects, and frogs. There are also thematic shimmering cello textures which emulate the birds of the swamp, the rustling of animals through swamp waters, trees and vegetation, and recreate the incredibly active life in the swamp. Sometimes you’ll be hearing one or the other, and often times they are mixed together as scenes transition in and out of the real and present moment. Not only will you hear snakes, alligators, frogs, and cicadas in the environment, you’ll be hearing those animals inside the music and sound effect cues as well! For example, there is a terrifying scream in one scene which breaks the action that is actually a combination of a frog sound mixed with a snake sound. There is a door creak which is really an alligator hiss mixed with an acoustic cello creaking sound effect. This creaking cello comes back later to become the sounds of a ship hull and also a burning down house. There is a moment when a dream catches on fire to become a nightmare and the terrifying, distorted crackling you hear are really snakes, cicadas and alligator sounds with distortion pedal, pitch, and tape delay effects. In another scene there are rapid gun fire shots in a video game which are actually all cicada sounds. When Papa is introduced in the play, he is getting off of work at the factory, we hear a jet of steam coming from the factory machines as he opens the window, which is really a snake hiss. There are even a few moments in musical cues where I’ve transformed these animal sounds into musical instruments! In my re-creation of “Ooopps I did it again” by Britney Spears, the keyboard part is actually made from a frog sound that I turned into a musical instrument! Later, we find ourselves in an impromptu history lesson listening to a rendition of the confederate anthem “(wish I was in) Dixie”. As the song plays, we can hear a jangling banjo strumming along to the violin melody, but again, it’s not a banjo, it’s actually another frog instrument that I created! It turns out, you can make a lot sounds and instruments from just frog noises alone – a very fascinating and versatile animal. I tried to find many creative ways to incorporate the sounds of the swamp into each environment, sound effect and music cue.

One of the other special aspects of the Environment sound design for this play involves live mic effects. What’s a ghost story without a ghost, right? Well we have an absolutely phantasmic apparition character, expertly played by Sheldon D. Brown. This shape-shifting spirit is tied to the land, tied to the history of Georgia. He is the ancestors you can hear singing from across the swamp if you are just quiet enough and listen. Throughout the play, the apparition helps to create the world by singing and vocalizing which are accentuated by effects like reverb, octave pitching, distortion, echo delays and more. The apparition breathes the landscape into existence. Sometimes sounding like a snakes and frogs, sometimes like church, and other times sounding like blood and mud.

The Apparition oohs and ahhs throughout the world, singing mostly in a Bb minor pentatonic scale. This minor pentatonic is the the origin scale of African American Spirituals, the Blues, and Jazz. But it goes deeper, the pentatonic scale pops up in nearly every culture throughout the world, from ancient to modern. It is the universal scale of all our ancestors. This Apparition is singing to us from the beyond, where our ancestral spirits live together. The Key of Bb was picked because that is the home key of the Blues. This minor pentatonic scale is specifically chosen for its use by the Commodores in the bridge of their song “Zoom” (one of the ballet pieces in the beginning). This single scale fits over all of the different chords in that bridge; and it’s important to note this, because the shimmering cello and organ swamp chords which are heard throughout the play are sourced from Zoom’s bridge. That’s my favorite part of the song and it happens to be sung by the Commodores with just ooohs and ahhhs! It was just too perfect, I had to use it in this show! The minor pentatonic scale appears in this production not only in “Zoom” by the Commodores and sung by the Apparition throughout, but also in “Untitled” by D’angelo, in Tani’s song “My Love” from Mali, West Africa, and in “Papa’s Blues”. It is a musical thread which is sewn from the beginning to the very end of this play’s tapestry.


Re-Records & Re-Makes
This play called for many specific music cues, which involved me re-making, re-recording, and re-creating a lot of songs from scratch. In the first 2 scenes, we are introduced to two piano plus cello Ballet renditions of RnB classics from Boyz II Men & the Commodores. I chose “Water Runs Dry” and “Zoom” not only because they fit the musical requirement for the cue, but because of the lyric content too. The messages in those songs exactly match with the context of the situation that they accompany on stage – this was very important to me. And every time you hear the themes and variations of those songs (of which there are many) throughout the production, it is for a specific thematic reason which absolutely correlates the lyric content with the character moment. In scenes 3 and 4 the script calls for some late 90’s nostalgia with re-makes of “Ooops, I did it again” by Britney Spears and “Untitled (how does it feel)” by D’angelo. I had an absolute blast re-creating both of these from the ground up, making them feel as close to the original as possible. For Oopps, I created an instrumental version which comes out of the real song’s chorus, and with Untitled, I re-made the entire back track and thematically replaced the vocal part with a church organ. Both of these pieces show up in different ways throughout the rest of the music cues. For instance, in a scene with Papa and Ezekial V debating about the land they live on, there is a heavy blues jam which introduces Papa to the scene. It’s a very late 60’s Jimi Hendrix Band of Gypsies vibe, featuring the late, great Madsion legend Clyde Stubblefield (James Brown’s “Funky Drummer”) shuffling on the drums. The distorted riffs that I am playing on bass guitar are a theme and variations based on a guitar riff that happens halfway through D’angelo’s “Untitled”. It’s also no accident that the 6 feel of Papa’s heavy blues shuffle is directly correlated to the 6 feel slow jam of Untitled. The re-recorded drum part alone from Untitled comes back a few times, for the appropriate atmosphere. We hear the vocal harmony parts from the last chorus of Oops, reappear later on as the main horn and brass parts of a ‘Call of Duty’ style video game soundtrack that I made, because Oopps themes are specifically tied to Danny’s character.

There are also a number of re-records and re-makes of the Gone With The Wind soundtrack as well as some old Dixie tunes, which you’ll understand if you see the show…


Musicians on this Production
Tani Diakite (Mali / Madison, WI) – Vocals, Kamele N’goni
Djam Vivie (Ghana / Madison, Wi) – Jembe
Paddy Cassidy (Madison, WI) – Jembe
Clyde Stubblefield (Madison, WI) – Drum Set
Eric Harland (from Houston, TX) – Drum Set sounds
Brian Grimm (Madison, WI) – Cello & strings, Bass Guitar, Pipa lute, Piano, Organ, Music Production, Composition

I’m so thrilled that one of my favorite Madison based musicians, Tani Diakite was willing to be involved and contribute his beautiful songs to the production. Early on I asked Tani (from Mali) and his drummers Djam (from Ghana) & Paddy if we could record some videos of them performing West African songs and drum rhythms for myself and the Actors to learn from. I had such a blast hosting them at my house for a day to record instructional videos and also to record drumming, clapping and songs which we used in the play. Tani has a joyous voice that always makes me smile. I’ve been wanting to collaborate with him for years and I’m glad we finally had a chance to work on something together!! A huge thanks to Tani, Djam and Paddy for their performances and for teaching us their beautiful song and rhythms.

[I will be updating this post soon with some clips of those videos here]

Please check out Tani’s music, you won’t regret it!


the Elephant in the Room…

I am a straight white male from the north working on a play which celebrates black life and queer love, but also speaks the harmful, painful truths of living a black queer experience in the American south. Why did Mikael choose me to do sound design for this particular play? It’s a conversation we really haven’t had yet, but it was one of the first questions on my mind after I read the play. With so many specific calls for black music in this script, was it really appropriate for me to be the person handling those cues? If I make a wrong move, or pushed something too far in one direction or another, does it become tokenism, cultural appropriation, minstrelsy, or some musical equivalent of black-face? This has been in the back of my mind the entire time. I’m sure on paper alone, some people will feel this way regardless and would check “Yes” to a number of those boxes. I don’t have all the answers on such a massive issue such as this and am always open to criticism, but I can say that all of these musical cues were made from a place of love, empathy and absolute respect. One of the plays Mikael and I worked on together last year at our alma mater Butler University deals exactly with this issue. In “We are Proud to Present…” by Pulitzer Prize winner Jackie Sibblies Drury, we explored whether one can truly tell someone else’s story. Whether our never having lived such an experience automatically negates our ability to “put ourselves in someone else’s shoes” and empathize with that experience. No matter how hard I might try to imagine or how honest my intentions may have been, I have never lived a black queer experience in America. Where does the line get crossed. When is it twisted out of proportion, cultural appropriation, misunderstanding or missing the mark to the point of causing pain to the people who’ve actually lived that life?… Mikael trusted me enough to pick me for this position, so I had to trust him and know that he’d tell me if things were heading in the wrong direction or getting inappropriate.

But the question still remained, especially when Music is such an integral part of Black Culture and along side dance artforms, the single most inappropriately appropriated aspect of Black culture on a global scale – for centuries. This is one reason that I wanted to involve the fantastic African and African American guest musicians that I did (see above), I knew that I wouldn’t feel right if the music was exclusively made by me, a white person.

African American music has been an enormous part of my life, since I was a child. For most people in western culture, the first image of who a “Composer is” (and can be) is Mozart or Beethoven – but for me it was Duke Ellington. I had a children’s book about the life and music of Duke Ellington and his big band. It was filled with water color imagery of Sir Duke playing on stage with his band. These beautiful depictions absolutely captivated my young imagination. It was no coincidence that the first cassette tape I remember owning was a Duke Ellington’s Greatest Hits compilation. So for me, before I knew of Mozart or Beethoven or Bach – I knew Duke Ellington. Duke was my first image of who a Composer is, of what a Composer can be, and how a Composer writes, performs, & records music. He was a Composer, an American Composer, an African American Composer – one of the greatest to ever do it.

This early exposure as a child to the wondrous music of Duke Ellington opened my eyes to Black Beauty, to Black Excellence. But these sorts of cultural exposures shouldn’t be random or happenstance. Culture is learned, culture is taught, culture is passed down. White people must learn to see Black as Beautiful, it’s something that White people need to culturally teach one another to recognize and appreciate and support. Racism is taught, learned and passed down, but so is Love. White people: we’ve got to chose Love and to teach Love over Racism for America to heal. Black Excellence in the Arts shines so bright that you can see it with your eyes closed. See it. Celebrate it. Cherish it. Learn lessons from it. Be inspired by it. Through the words of Terry’s magnificent script, under the direction of Mikael’s nuanced storytelling, through the passionate layers of Wardell & Sheldon’s performances, you are witnessing Black Genius.


Please donate to the relief funds for the victims of the racially motivated murders in Buffalo last week: https://www.gofundme.com/c/act/buffalo-mass-shooting-fundraisers

Or find a way to donate in a helpful way within your local community ❤️


playwright Terry Guest featured as the character Z