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Bureau of Missing Persons

BNPF 2008

Medea

Medea Sound Design Excerpt jaguar from toby jaguar on Vimeo.

Medea was a challenging venture for many reasons. The play was performed in the round and integrated live musicians with original composition. The scenes were dominated by structured improvisational underscoring, as well as, composed odes sung by the chorus during the strophes and antistrophes. The director’s use of Asian ritual was the guiding inspiration for most of the conceptual choices of the show. There were ancient Korean influences as well as Tibetan Chant, which was a spring board for the sound design. The choral odes were developed from an eastern chanting paradigm involving low, breathy, drone notes, and microtonal steps in melodic progression.

The process started very early and Toby was excited to be integrated into the rehearsals introducing the composed odes, training the actors in the vocal style of the odes, and supervising the musicians. The music was developed from the Buto influenced dance gestures associated with the progression of narrative and a negotiation between the actors and musicians. Steve Hoey utilized wind instruments such as flutes, recorders, ocarinas, conch shells, and the six-foot trumpet that was purchased for the show, while Jason Rosenberg was responsible for percussion principally handling the hung Korean drum, in addition to bells, cymbals, frame drums, and gongs.

Another interesting element of this design was the integration of spatial and structural micing for dramatic support of the narrative. Medea’s voice was manipulated by placing shotgun mics in the space and pitch-shifting her voice down. Two shotgun mics were positioned in the grid, one pointing at a five-foot platform that Medea sits on at the top of the show, while the other pointing directly down at center stage, where Medea remained throughout the entire show. The microphones were able to pick up her voice at these distances and pitch-shift the signal down to give her a more ominous and powerful dynamic in the play.

Because the sound without amplification was not significant, two rope positions were also miced to intensify the moment in the play when these scenic elements are pulled down from their mount points. Lastly, the set was miced in two positions with AKG C-411 contact mics for use during the murder of Medea’s children. During this moment the percussionist built a crescendo on the Korean Drum, which faded into the swell of the wind player drumming the set, with his hands, in the same tempo as the other drum. The result was a personification of the space reacting to the deed. The infastructure of the theatre rumbles as Medea strangles her children, the rhythm mirroring their struggle, until the acoustic limits of the space – death.

This production received a Pattè Award for sound design in 2007.

wikipedia Medea

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