SOUND DESIGNER
I see sound design as aural sculpting. The heart of my work is in the space itself, shaping how layers of sound can create realistic soundscapes or all-encompassing abstract experiences. I am interested in metaphor, how resonance impacts the body, and musical storytelling.
tick, tick… BOOM!
Director Kayla Schwartz wanted this iconic Jonathan Larson musical to feel like an intimate workshop. She asked her designers for something raw, pulled-back, and honest. Sound became our primary tool to signify setting. My work mainly centered around creating realistic, ambient soundscapes that encompassed the audience, pulling them into the story. Schwartz and I also worked on creating easter eggs throughout for the Larson fans in the audience, situating the production within the legacy of his life. As an example, we chose specific moments to venture beyond realism and add aural references to Larson’s masterpiece, Rent. Beyond exciting viewers who are “in” on the easter egg, we wanted to broaden the scope of tick, tick… BOOM! and hint at the main character’s eventual success.
Somewhere
Director Olga Sanchez Salveit invited me to sound design her Middlebury College faculty production of Somewhere by Marisela Treviño Orta. In this post-apocalyptic play, human beings begin to develop strange mutations. A man becomes grafted to a tree stump. A woman transforms into lichen on a bolder. Characters metamorphose into mushrooms or even butterflies.
My design supported an essential duality in this play: a gritty, human-centric apocalypse and the transcendent yet unknown forces of the non-human world. For the former, I embraced the work of SMOGMA. In Somewhere, the human world is in ruins with everyone trying to make due with what they have. The environment is dry and dusty, like a desert. SMOGMA’s work perfectly aligned with this world. Collaborators Parker Weston (PKWST) and Vic Void literally recycle trash littered in the desert and improvise percussive, harsh, and terrifying musical pieces. The play’s non-human world feels mystical and ancient, on the cusp of a new kind of evolution. I was deeply inspired by composer John Luther Adams’ and his The Wind in High Places. The non-human world is most often represented by butterflies, creatures of the wind and air. This provided me with the opportunity to contrast the deeply earthy sound of SMOGMA and the human world. The ambient, otherworldly harmonics in The Wind in High Places evoked something extremely powerful, beyond the control of humankind, yet delicate and invisible. These two musical inspirations provide me a focused direction for further aural world-building.
Every Brilliant Thing
In many ways, this heartful play by Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe is a love letter to music. With frequent references to vinyl, director Kayla Schwartz and I wanted the audience to feel like a record player was in the room. I expanded the musical world specified by the playwrights, rooting the sound design in the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Etta James, Curtis Mayfield, Ray Charles, Billie Holliday, and Ornette Coleman. A major part of the fun was manipulating the music to sound like vinyl on a record player, needle drops and all. Schwartz and I discovered early on that the play didn’t need any ambient soundscapes or spot effects. Rather the music, with precise timing and placement in space, could do all the work.
Botticelli in the Fire
Director Ryan Kirby and I produced this epic play by Jordan Tannahill as our undergraduate thesis (mine in acting, sound design, and composition). There were three major parts to this design. First, Kirby was deeply inspired by 80s queer aesthetics and wanted to feature the music of Madonna as a major part of our soundtrack, in particular her album Erotica. Music from this era supported the essential pace, tone, and energy of this production. Second, I built ambient soundscapes and spot effects to enhance the play’s many settings. Third, I took Tannahill’s lyrics written into the script and devised a composition with a ten-person choir. The choral music became the expression of the play’s underbelly, enhancing moments when the central character loses control of the narrative. These ominous choral pieces were devised around a main theme, inspired by Madonna’s chorus in Think of Me. The goal was to make the chorus feel intrinsically tied to the 80s soundtrack yet be able to inhabit a different world.
Giants Have Us In their Books
Director Alex Draper recruited me to compose music for the Middlebury College faculty production of Giants Have Us In Their Books by José Rivera. This play is made up of many shorter plays, each with their own distinct quality, tone, and subject matter. The effect of which is a grown-up, surrealist book of fairytales. My music served to enhance magical moments and as a way to transition from story to story, while also binding the scenes into one aural world.
No One Is Forgotten
I directed this intense Winter Miller play as an undergraduate intermediate project. I also joined our design team as the sound designer. We all had the same challenge: convey the life-threatening circumstances of the play as minimally as possible. My design needed to realistically communicate just enough about the characters’ situation yet give nothing away about their location or their captors. The effect was eerie and disturbing. Like the characters, the audience didn’t know where they were and couldn’t tell if a threat was around the corner.