The stage is alive with the sound of Cricket. That’s Cricket S. Myers who is so ubiquitous on the Los Angeles theatre scene a regular patron cannot attend often without hearing her work.

As a sound designer Myers infuses so many local productions with aural augmentations she reels off a resume full of hits and reels in recognition for those hits with auspicious alacrity. In the last year alone she captivated Ovation voters to honor her with four nominations for Battle Hymn presented by Circle X Theatre at [Inside] the Ford, Mary’s Wedding at the Colony and two at the Kirk Douglas, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo and The Little Dog Laughed. This brings her Ovation total to 10 nominations in a mere three years.

She first heard her calling while a freshman at her Michigan high school. She relates, “My mother who teaches there ran the drama club. She encouraged me to try out for the school play, Toad of Toad Hall. I was cast as one of the ferrets. I don’t remember a lot about that production except all us ferrets were costumed in these cute flowery dresses. We were the villains but it’s hard to be evil when you’re dressed in flowers.

“I quickly found out I have extreme stage fright. I coped with it because I could sort of conceal myself among the other ferrets. I knew though acting wasn’t for me. But I met the most amazing people backstage. I became enchanted with their energy and their passion. I wasn’t meant to be onstage but I couldn’t keep away from that energy. Our high school did two plays a year and I worked on all of them in all kinds of capacities, working my way up to stage managing my senior year.”

She let herself be talked into taking one last stab at an onstage appearance her senior year. “My friend who directed Memorandum persuaded me to play the secretary. I didn’t have many lines. I mostly had to sit there brushing my hair. I managed to handle that okay.”

Cricket Myers – Audio Sample “Door Roll Closed” from Haram Iran

She then headed off to Colorado College in Colorado Springs where she earned her BA in theatre. She says, “When you’re 18, you just want to get out of your own town. That wasn’t the only reason I went there though. Colorado College doesn’t offer the normal semester of classes. They’re on the block plan where you immerse yourself. You go to one class all day five days a week for three and a half weeks. Then you take four days off and start the next class. The classes are structured for maximum focus on a discipline. For example I took an astronomy class that met from 9 pm to midnight which allowed us to concentrate fully on our subject.”

If that system precipitated great benefits in studying the celestial bodies, Myers truly harvested an untold abundance when she shifted her stargazing to the luminaries of the theatre. She explains, “They have two different campus facilities in addition to the main campus. One is about a half hour away. The other consists of some cabins about three hours away. When we studied Shakespeare, our professor took us to the cabins because he wanted us removed from the distractions of everyday campus activities.

“Another class required us to see and discuss as many plays as possible. Well you can’t see too many plays in Colorado in three and a half weeks so that professor took the whole class to London. Each student chipped in $500 plus air fare but we got a refund from our dorm fees and cafeteria tickets for that time which just about covered our costs.”

Armed with her BA, Myers wanted more and decided to aim for a graduate degree but took a brief detour with an internship at Midland Community Theatre in Texas.