This production presented a ingenious solution to a common sound design challenge. How do you create a realistic telephone ring on stage? In North Coast Repertory's production of Tuesday's With Morrie the usual solutions were not acceptable.

In this play an actor answers his cell phone several times. In the past I have handled this by hiding speaker onstage somewhere near the actor and playing a sound effect. For this production, the combination of a sparsely furnished set, thrust stage, and blocking that places phone calls in several places meant that there was no practical place to put a speaker. Providing the actor with a working cell phone and calling it proved too unreliable and difficult to time with the dialog. So a new solution was necessary.

For this production I custom built from a couple of electronics kits a wireless, battery operated, cell phone effects unit. On cue, the stage manager used a small radio transmitter to trigger a cell phone effects circuit taken from a child's toy. The receiver unit was small enough to be hidden in actor's coat pocket and loud enough to be heard by the audience.