FROM INTERNET PORNOGRAPHY TO JANE AUSTEN FAN-FIC:

A SONIC EXPLORATION OF TWO PLAYS

This portolio is a look into my designs for my two most starkly disparate consecutive projects. Both Incognito Mode and Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley were plays staged in Vancouver during the 2018-2019 season.

Here we go…

INCOGNITO MODE

STUDIO 58/NEWORLD THEATRE

Director  Chelsea Hablerlin; Writer  Marcus Youssef; Set Designer  Lauchlin Johnston; Lighting Designer  Andrew Pye; Composer & Sound Designer  Heather Kemski; Video Designer  Candelario Andrade; Costume Designer  Chantal Short; Choreographer  Tara Cheyenne-Friedenberg

My work on Incognito Mode entailed sound design, original music and music directing an ensemble of senior-term acting students at Studio 58 (Langara College’s Theatre School.)

Incognito Mode was originally a one-night, student-devised performance piece called, The Porn Project. The acting students explored their experience having grown up with full access to internet pornography, and how it shaped and informed their sexuality and identity. I was brought on the following year as part of a professional creative team, to develop the project into a main stage show. Prior to the rehearsals, I was working off archival footage, and some sweeping themes and loose direction, rather than a script.

This was the most personally and professionally challenging project on which I’ve worked: I tend to go in to first rehearsal for a show with my preliminary design complete so that I may test out cues and timings; not having a script meant my focus throughout rehearsals was mainly content creation rather than editing.

Other challenges included the subject matter—one of my major concerns was having the project sound cliché or like a public service announcement—the time constraint, and the fact that I’d never previously worked as a music director with college students. I viewed this project as an opportunity to push my boundaries and broaden my skillset.

Incognito Mode was also one of the most technical and cohesively-designed shows on which I’ve worked creatively.

The set included a painted floor inspired by the visual depiction of the internet.

Painted floor inspired by a visual depiction of the internet; Set Design by Lauchlin Johnston

This design element, in turn, inspired my sound: I considered wires, modern communication and the transmission of information. Characters going in and out of “incognito mode” (a convention established in the script) were underscored by digital sounds that travelled directionally throughout the black box theatre.

Emma goes into “incognito mode"

My speaker plot included 8 speakers: two monitors pointed at the stage (so the actors could hear the underscoring of their songs), Stage L & R, House L & R, a subwoofer in the centre of the theatre, and an onstage R speaker, set on the floor for the sounds I wanted grounded—notably, the sound of a river.

The play opened with a sound I built, evocative of a vortex. The cast entered and hit their marks as the audience sat in complete darkness being transported through this sonic portal. At the climax of the crescendo, the cast is in place and the lights snap on, and the very modern, sci-fi sounding vortex leads us, auditorily, and surprisingly, to nature sounds—the river in the onstage speaker, and the sounds of birds in a forest in the house speakers: we travel through space to an entirely contradictory soundscape, as a character begins her monologue about being “lost in the wilderness.”

Opening sound cue

I wanted the opening sound cue to be striking and cinematic—given the depth of the sound I built, especially the lows coming through the sub, you could feel the sonic rumble in your stomach. It wasn’t overpowering, but transportive.

While the set inspired the sound, the sound and music directly influenced the lighting and video design—there were four giant panels with LED lights that the lighting designer programmed to light up in rhythm with the music, creating a cohesive, visually and sonically captivating environment.

Mood lighting; Lighting Design by Andrew Pye

I wrote two songs for Incognito Mode, and music directed the ensemble as to how they should be sung. For the first song, I was tasked with generating lyrical content solely from the titles of "mainstream" porn categories. I sampled the sounds of people having sex from actual pornography, did some production work on the found audio, and the wrote a backing track with a hooky, deep synth riff and beats evocative of bedsprings. I wanted it to sound mass consumerist, over-produced, masculine, hard, and comical (the students were in costumes that featured oversized anatomy or were dressed as stock porn characters.)

I also wanted to play with the idea of what we as a society find sexy, who is dictating that, and also fully highlight the awkwardness of the subject: the track ends with my stripping away (no pun intended) all of my production work, revealing a raw, unproduced audio track...

Mainstream porn categories song, or Just Beat It backing track

The other song was the “ethical" porn categories tune. This song needed to be in stark contrast to the first—I wanted it to feel intimate, and sexy in a more delicate way, without losing a bit of an edge, because we’re still talking sex here.

The choreography set to this song was entirely different from the first—actions were connected and deliberate. The track continued after the ensemble’s singing and carried through a transitional sequence in which the actors dropped the massive LED walls and through sound and video projection, revealed a river laid upon the stage.

Ethical porn categories song, or The Softer Side of Porn backing track

Some of my music direction for the ensemble included “finding the musicality in words”: if the only lyrical content you are offered consists of titles/categories you aren’t able to string into full lyrics, how does one shape that into a musical narrative? I worked with the ensemble to consider how some syllables are naturally percussive, whilst others are smooth and round. We played with emphasizing how our voices naturally turn up with the ee sound (as in “free”), and down with the er sound (as in “bear”) and worked on differentiating melodies, rhythms and cadence to add interest and musically shape the words being spoken or sung.

One of my favourite comments about the design came from a male audience member who complained to our Stage Manager that the music was “loud and offensive” and who kept referring to the Sound Designer as “he,” refusing to accept our Stage Manager's correction that sound designer was in fact a woman. I was delighted to have been the most offensive part of The Porn Project for at least one person!

MISS BENNET: CHRISTMAS AT PEMBERLEY (Or, The Anti-Porn Project)

ARTS CLUB

Under the mistletoe at Pemberley Estate

Director  Roy Surette; Writers  Lauren Gunderson, Margot Melcon; Set Designer  Ted Roberts; Lighting Designer  Conor Moore; Composer & Sound Designer  Heather Kemski; Costume Designer  Amy McDougall; Photos by David Cooper

My project immediately following Incognito Mode, could not possibly have been more different: the script for Miss Bennet had already been written (by two American women looking to construct the perfect holiday hit), and the moment I read it, well before first rehearsal, I immediately knew what it sounded like.

Miss Bennet is a romantic comedy set in the early 19th Century, the plot of which centers around Mary Bennet (the middle sister of the Bennet girls in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice) and her Christmastime visit to her sister Lizzy’s grand estate. Will she ever find a husband there? One who truly understands her? Just in time for Christmas??— Yes. Obviously.

Mary’s Theme

In many ways, the music very much shaped the onstage action: for instance, taking a cue from the waltz I’d written for Mary’s flirtatious younger sister, Lydia, the director opted to have the actor move in a waltz-like fashion, rather than simply walk around the set. Her comic and heightened musical theme directly influenced her character.

Despite the frothiness of the material, I strove to give a depth to the soundtrack that wasn’t necessarily in the script, while playing up the cheekiness and humour already present in the play.

A couple notable comical sequences in which I shamelessly employ Mickey Mousing (meaning, matching movement to music, typically for comedic effect) include extracting just the melody from Lydia’s waltz theme into a single-line, slippery piano motif as she sneaks up on the male romantic lead, Arthur, with mistletoe.

That’s a poisonous shrub, Lydia!

Lydia sneaks up on Arthur

There is also a transitional movement sequence in which Mary hip-checks Lydia out of the room in an effort to gain some alone time with Arthur: this physical action was underscored by a prominent violin glissando; (the gliss was a separate cue over the underscoring to accommodate for timing changes, performance to performance.)

Lydia’s Waltz

Stay away from my man!

Another comic musical sequence included Mary’s showing up of Arthur’s mistaken fiancée, Anne, with the playing of a virtuosic piano piece (Beethoven.)

Take that, Anne!

I recorded in all of the pianoforte cues, and built a custom VSTi (virtual studio technology instrument.) I don’t particularly relish the tinny sound of a pianoforte—it sounds dated to the modern ear, which is accustomed to the warmth and richness of a modern piano. I strove to create something in between—a virtual instrument evocative of a bygone era, while having the depth and freshness of a modern concert grand. Ultimately, I achieved the sound I wanted through combining multiple digital instruments at varying levels, and EQing.

I encouraged the director, set designer and props master to employ a piano akin to an English Broadwood grand in the design, rather than the upright that they’d originally planned to use. I felt that the piano needed to have a visual, as well as a sonic presence, given all of the cues that were to come from it, and given its role in Mary’s story.

My speaker plot was the traditional setup in the theatre (6 speakers in the house, back, mids and front, 2 subs at front of house, 1 speaker offstage R—for doorbells, etc.) plus the speaker tucked in an alcove behind the pianoforte, facing outward toward the rounded window, shooting the sound out and around to the audience.

One of my favourite musical sequences included a transition from diagetic to non-diagetic music: Mary begins to play a simple refrain of O Tannenbaum at the pianoforte, there is a brief rest in the music as she stands and exits the scene while other characters enter, and the music is pulled from the onstage speaker and instead fills the house, as snow begins to fall behind the large windows, immersing the audience, sonically and visually, in a theatrical snowglobe.

Livin’ in an upper-class 19th Century paradise at Pemberley Estate

O Christmas Tree pt. 1 & 2

Thank you for listening to my portfolio. Please feel free to contact me for any additional samples of my work.