Carlson is a constant for Marion theater
Sports reporter
For nearly five decades, the ever-changing stage productions at Marion Auditorium have been tied together by a single constant, sound engineer Gary Carlson.
Carlson, a Clay Center native who moved to Marion in 1957, tackled his first stage production the following year.
"I was probably the only one dumb enough to try it," he chuckled, when asked how he first got involved.
It was a stint in the Air Force during the Korean Conflict that turned Carlson's interest in electronics into a lifelong career.
"When I went into the service, I wanted to be a truck driver or a cook," he recalled. "But I had some experience playing with electronics, and they said 'You're going to be in electronics'."
Carlson did contract television and radio service for vendors in Clay Center, including Walt Oelschlager, who moved to Marion in 1956. It was Oelschlager who convinced Carlson to move to Marion.
"I worked for him for a year, and then went out on my own," Carlson said.
The earliest plays for which Carlson did sound were ones written and produced by Jean Holmes.
"The plays were fund-raisers for PTA, and the money went to scholarships," he explained.
Carlson's audio equipment for those productions was rudimentary.
"We'd have an amplifier back stage, and probably two microphones, and a couple of homemade speakers that sat on the corners of the stage," Carlson said.
"This was back when people learned to project and get by without sound," he noted, "so it was really sound enhancement then."
As technology has evolved, so has Carlson's task of audio production, as evidenced by the setup used for Marion High School's recent production of "My Fair Lady."
"We used 10 wireless microphones, each with its own receiver, we have a mixer with four inputs and an amplifier with eight," he explained.
An additional backstage hard-wired microphone was available for lines delivered from off stage, and eight walkie-talkies allowed constant communication among production crew members.
While wireless microphones worn by individual actors improves the overall audio experience for the audience, they present some unique challenges, Carlson pointed out.
"One of the plays where I had more broken mikes than ever was 'Wizard of Oz'," Carlson said.
"Justin Brookens was the Scarecrow — he'd be on the ground, he'd be up, he'd be down and roll around. There wasn't anyplace he could put it (the microphone) on himself where he wouldn't have fallen on it," explained Carlson.
Wireless microphones transmit over unique radio frequencies, and as the number of microphones used has increased, Carlson has had to be careful to avoid a problem he encountered with similar systems he installed for local churches.
"One Sunday morning at Eastmoor (United Methodist Church), just as our services were starting, our sound system started doing the Lord's Prayer, and I had to shut down that mike and go to an alternate," he recalled.
It happened again the next Sunday, and as they listened to try and identify where the voice was coming from, they noticed the Lord's Prayer ended earlier than the version used at Eastmoor.
"It turned out to be the Catholic church service," Carlson chuckled, explaining that the sound system he sold to them used the same radio frequency as the one used at Eastmoor.
Carlson approaches each new production with the same guiding principle he's used for 48 years, one focused on making sure audiences get the most out of their experience.
"Every line is crucial," Carlson emphasized. "If you miss a line, you may have missed the thing that concludes the story."
