Meet the backstage family behind the scenes at OLO

The Ohio Light Opera season is as much a part of Wooster summers as taking a swim in one of the community pools or having a local ice cream treat. While all the audience sees is the onstage magic created by the cast and musicians, it takes an extraordinary amount of backstage talent, creativity and teamwork to create what appears when the curtain goes up.

This season the technical team includes a father and daughter — Christopher and Anne Plummer.

Christopher Plummer came to the OLO in 2017 as the sound designer. His experience spans work that has taken him all over the world. There are two main parts to his job: vocal reinforcement and sound effects.

Vocal reinforcement involves managing the microphones, loudspeakers and mixing involved in creating an engaging audience experience, including ensuring words are understandable to the theatergoers. He also creates atmospheric effects and spot effects such as the footsteps of an offstage giant or the gentle lapping of ocean waves. His position also includes recruiting and interviewing the sound crew.

Anne Plummer first came to the OLO for a summer job three years ago.

“I initially came here because it seemed like a better job than another summer serving sushi,” she said. “I have come to love the job because of the collaboration and especially to be able to earn a salary making art.”

Anne Plummer is going into her second year of college, studying theater technology and design. She’s working as a painter, taking the raw, unfinished scenery constructed by the scene shop and finishing it as determined by the designers. Typically, the process involves painting a piece to a given texture such as brick, stone or wood. It also can involve applying fake foliage, sculpting rocks and other various finishing touches.

The father and daughter don’t see each other much while working.

“It is great to have such a close seat to the start of my daughter’s career,” Christopher Plummer said. “(Though) often our schedules are rather at odds with each other, we do get some real great time together in our down times.”

Christopher Plummer said working backstage means sometimes being in the theater for 14 hours at a stretch.

“It takes a lot to install the sound equipment, tune each speaker to perform optimally in the acoustic space and then to time align all of the speakers so that they seamlessly become part of the acoustic signature of the room,” he said. “This pays off when we can make the voices more articulate and clear. In addition to the wireless microphones and digital mixer, we use three computers, programming sound changes for when performers have hats, dynamically changing the mixer to help us keep the sound focused and clear, playing back sound cues, and creating surround sound atmospheres and effects.”

Surround effects are part of the magical mood in “Brigadoon,” supporting the sound of the distant “Brigadoon” chorus.

By the time all shows of the season are up and running, an audience member can see six different productions within the space of a few days.

“Behind the scenes it means we follow a strict cascading schedule, whereas as soon as we get close to opening our first show of the season, we’ve already started on building the second, which follows through until we’ve opened all six shows,” Anne Plummer said.

To accommodate the schedule, Anne Plummer said many of the sets reuse large structural elements to conserve materials, storage space and time. For the current season, a group of platforms of various sizes is present in nearly every show, just with different-sized legs and custom covers.

Meetings for each season begin in January, with the crew diving into scripts and considering all the design areas. Christopher Plummer said while some elements may be started before the season begins for a particularly challenging show, often the actual building of sound effects doesn’t begin until he and his crew are in residence.

As final rehearsals begin before a show opens, the actors have their first opportunity to sing with the orchestra.

“(While they focus on the music),” Christopher Plummer said, “the technical crews will do final touches on furniture placement on stage and refine all of the sound and lighting ideas to work precisely in this theater with the specific equipment we have. Then we have just a few rehearsals to dial in all of the different elements.”

The 2025 season of the Ohio Light Opera runs through Aug. 2.