melissa schlesinger

Windy City Burlesque Festival

LITTLE CHILDREN. DANCING. This was the most adorable lil' mess of a play. Exactly what you'd expect from Elementary kids. But my painter and I kicked out some sweet design aspects to help them kids look even better.

I designed the set, sound, and painted our production of Stuart Little

Production of Proof at The Drama Group in Chicago Heights

I created a soundscape for this touching piece of theatre. Also for the remount in July 2013.

Trash was a great show to work on not only because I love doing original scripts, but because I learned new ways to complete a design. The script called for a very specific song, but I didn't like the versions that were already available, so I contacted a friend and her band to see if they could do a version that would better suit the show, and we got them recorded and put them in. It was a great experience.

My claim to fame on this show was the telephones. Tennessee's play takes place in the 1910s, so we had antique telephones on the props list. I like my phones to actually ring when possible, so I tinkered around with the antiques and got them to work! (There's a video on my website.)

This show was one of my favorite original scripts so far. Working in a fairly small location, I knew directionality would be important, so I found a tiny lil' speaker and hid it in the set so that it would sound like the cell phone rings were actually coming from the actors' phones.

2009 Production of Boys Life by Hanger 9 at Gorilla Tango Theatre

Oversee load in and load out for itinerant theatre companies. Maintain facilities and equipment. Hang out with the coolest people in Chicago creating great works of theatre.

I helped my good friend and contemporary, Amanda Rozmiarek, complete the set design for Orpheus. We built platforms, special bracing, and even did a bit of metal working.

Moraine Valley had just upgraded their playback system to include Qlab, but they weren't yet trained in how to program it. So they brought me in to design the show and show them around the system. Great script, great folks, good times.

This show had so many scenes! Therefor, it had a lot of internal cues. I had fun recording the 'banshee' sound effects.

I lived in the ticket booth for a summer.

Make purchasing decisions for new technologies. Install said technologies. Design sound for shows. Record voice overs. Run the board during concerts. Hang out with cool artists doing great things in the Portage Park Community.

I started off working as a driver/field technician. Taking a fleet vehicle out on a multi-stop route, delivering bottle orders and picking up water and soil samples to bring back to the lab for testing. Occasionally going on missions to take samples in the field and using a probe to take readings. Then I got promoted to shipping and receiving where I would prepare bottle orders, keep bottle stock inventory, work with vendors to negotiate pricing, ship samples and bottles for sampling to clients and other laboratories for subcontracting. I would also occasionally answer phones and help answer testing questions for clients.

I am the official Set DJ for GPS projects. Occasionally editing audio, often lugging around camera equipment and helping set up a shoot, doing the scene design thing for on camera visuals, & learning to animate.

This was my first show working at The Raven. After struggling with the out-dated SFX system, we borrowed a Qlab computer from a company friend. I enjoyed the struggle to find the perfect 'rope snap' sound effect.

Design sound, set, and properties depending on the show. Hang out with really cool artists doing really cool things.

* EA is a Room Escape company dedicated to designing and executing challenging, cerebral, story-based room escape games. * Current Project: Duck and Cover Classroom * Now Playing: The Railcar, The Dollhouse, Operation GRANIE, Detective Vs Dillinger, Roaring Dan's Pirate Dungeon

Forms in Motion Circus

The great voice of our Hank and the talents of our band made my job on this show very easy. I also got to digging up a bunch of old radio advertisements, which were very entertaining.

Activities and Societies: Theatre, Art Club, NAHS, NHS

Activities and Societies: BU Theatre, USITT, The EDGE Student Radio