From the redwoods of Santa Cruz to the waters of the Mississippi, Ryan has leveraged one opportunity after another to pursue storytelling via sound. Starting as a a sound engineer, and proceeding to mix a world premier musical, assist at theaters in DC and design in some of the best institutions in the country, Ryan has been working in theatrical sound for over ten years.
Ryan grew up in southern California, near the beach, somewhere between LA and San Diego. At the age of four his mom and dad decided to homeschool him and his two younger brothers. Thus, for the next ten years Ryan spent a good deal of time in the museums of Balboa Park, the tide pools along the coast, hiking in the Anza-Borrego desert, and generally spent a lot of time getting dirty. He also spent a great deal of time at storytelling festivals up and down California, learning the aural traditions of many different cultures. Reading, writing and arithmetic happened as well, but from everything else he got an insatiable curiosity that propels him today.
After Shakespeare Santa Cruz where he started as an intern and climbed the ranks to master sound engineer, and finally designer, Ryan pursued an MFA in Theatrical Sound at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Studying under David E Smith, he specialized in design thinking and problem solving, applying the design process to not only sound design, but system design and developing classes. This culminated in his Master's Thesis which explored the parallels between visual design and aural design. This interest in design, not just of sound, but the design of everything continues to push him forward, as the posters, books, music, sounds of the world around him continues to kindle his curiosity.
Leaving graduate school, Ryan moved to Minneapolis to work as a freelance sound professional. During that time he was the mix engineer for a world premier musical at the Guthrie, designed sound for the Children's Theater of Charlotte and continued to develop his design aesthetic outside of school. This lead in 2009/2010 to Ryan becoming a Thomas S Kenan Fellow at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. He used this opportunity to work at a plethora of theaters, including Woolly Mammoth Theater Company, Arena Stage, Studio Theater, Ford's Theater, Shakespeare Theater Company and culminated his fellowship by designing the world premier children's musical "Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Musical" at the Kennedy Center.
Ryan has now returned to the state he learned to call his home away from home, North Carolina and is working as the resident sound designer/engineer at PlayMakers Repertory Company, where he has been busy not only designing their entire season, but spearheading a massive sound system upgrade, which will bring state of the art technology to the shows at PlayMakers and into the hands of students at Carolina.
