An­der­son Re­ceives Hon­or­able Men­tion at KCACTF

MISHAWAKA -- Matthew An­der­son, se­nior lib­eral stud­ies ma­jor, re­ceived hon­or­able men­tion at the Kennedy Cen­ter Amer­i­can Col­lege The­atre Fes­ti­val (KCACTF) Re­gion 3 for Sound De­sign, in Madi­son, Wis.  

An­der­son had a great time par­tic­i­pat­ing in act­ing and de­sign com­pe­ti­tions, watch­ing other stu­dents com­pete, and tak­ing in sev­eral shows at the KCACTF, which took place from Jan. 7-12. 

Since re­ceiv­ing hon­or­able men­tion, An­der­son is more in­spired than ever.  

“I feel mo­ti­vated to keep try­ing new things and ex­plore the world of sound de­sign even more. It def­i­nitely in­spired me to push my­self,” he said. 

When he en­tered the com­pe­ti­tion, An­der­son said he barely knew all the rules or the process, but was cer­tain he had to bring his best ef­fort to­ward cre­at­ing some­thing he could be proud of shar­ing.  

“I fig­ured out what the next step was sim­ply by say­ing yes and fig­ur­ing it out as I went along,” he said. 

For oth­ers con­sid­er­ing such com­pe­ti­tions, he of­fered some ad­vice: 

“Don’t be afraid to try stuff and don’t give up on it just be­cause you don’t know where to go now. You never know what might be­come one of your biggest pas­sions.” 

Now that the com­pe­ti­tion is over, An­der­son is fo­cus­ing his en­er­gies on the up­com­ing Bethel in­ter­pre­ta­tion of Wiz­ard of Oz, com­ing up in March 2020.  

An­der­son had worked with sound equip­ment prior to com­ing to Bethel and has worked with the school’s tech­ni­cal staff. How­ever, he says his in­volve­ment with sound has been fairly lim­ited re­cently com­pared to last year when he worked with the trav­el­ing the­atre group, Gen­e­sians, as a sound tech­ni­cian. Af­ter pre­sent­ing a fi­nal class pro­ject for sound de­sign in the fall, he was ap­proached about sound de­sign­ing Wiz­ard of Oz and hap­pily ac­cepted.  

In sound de­sign­ing, An­der­son has the op­por­tu­nity to cre­ate the sound ef­fects the au­di­ence will hear in the show, in­clud­ing: tor­na­dos, magic sounds and the voice ef­fects of the Wiz­ard when he is in the ma­chine.  

The process will be co­or­di­nated with the Di­rec­tor, Mu­sic Di­rec­tor, and other de­sign­ers to make sure the ef­fects work to­gether seam­lessly.  

An­der­son said, “One of my biggest chal­lenges is mak­ing sure to not con­tend with the or­ches­tra­tion while still cre­at­ing an en­vi­ron­ment that con­veys to our au­di­ence what is go­ing on in the story.” 

An­der­son hopes his field of work is not some­thing that gets pushed aside in the years to come. He would love to work with sound equip­ment on a more per­ma­nent ba­sis, and post grad­u­a­tion, is plan­ning on work­ing as a Stage Man­ager.  

“I plan on tak­ing what I've learned into the pro­fes­sional world af­ter grad­u­at­ing, and sound de­sign­ing for some lo­cal the­atres. Those plans are still in the mak­ing at this point in time, but it’s def­i­nitely some­thing I want to con­tinue do­ing.”