Over the past two decades, sound design has been more fully recognized as essential to the overall design and shape of plays. The relationship between director and sound designer can be one of the closest collaborations found in the theatre, particularly with directors who think musically about plays. To explore the breadth and depth of these collaborations, playwright Jim Knable interviewed three pairs of directors and sound designers – ­emerging, established, and veteran – about their processes, their philosophies, and their prophecies for the future of sound design.

 

MIKHAIL FIKSEL + MARTI LYONS

Mikhail (Misha) Fiksel is a designer, composer, musician, and DJ from Novosibirsk, Russia, currently based in Chicago and Brooklyn. Marti Lyons is a director from Chicago and works all over the country Most recently, they collaborated on Sarah Delappe’s The Wolves at Studio Theatre in Washington, DC.

JIM | What was the first project that you worked on together?

MARTI | It was Romeo and Juliet, but we’ve known each other for nearly a decade.

MISHA | We finally got a chance to work as director and designer with Romeo and Juliet at Chicago Shakes in 2017.

MARTI | I was always really blown away by Misha’s sound. For me, it was maybe a little bit of a chase, of just knowing that it might take time until we found the right thing to work on together. But also, Misha’s a DJ, so we ran into each other at social things, where he was playing sets, and I was hearing his music that way, too.

JIM | What about Misha’s sound really grabbed you?

MARTI | There’s a fullness and an epicness to the sound, where I remember watching even Misha’s storefront shows and just feeling like suddenly this major presence had entered the room. With most shows, I would hear sound and it would feel like a gesture toward a thing, and Misha’s sound was the thing. You were too busy experiencing it to analyze it, and that really excited me.

Also, Misha has such an incredible sense of humor, which you will hear in the sound design. His sound design can be really quirky and funny but adding to what’s on stage, not just by itself. But then there can be a real darkness. There’s a way that he can play counterpoint to some really difficult moments on stage that both expands those moments and supports them so fully.

One of the things I’ve always loved is Misha’s sound design for violence on stage. Fight choreographers love working with him because of the way he can make that experience more full for the audience, by so interactively collaborating with what is happening moment to moment on stage.

MISHA | That’s incredibly kind. It’s interesting to hear described the epicness and the grand gestures of it, because I’ve sort of had to learn not to shy away from making bolder choices. What’s super important to me is that nobody’s paying attention to the design while they’re watching the show. They could be feeling it or they could be informed by it, but at no point do you want the audience member to think, “Wow, that’s a really interesting sound design choice.” Because then they’re not watching the play.

The one thing I always want to make sure of is that nothing ever sounds like a cue. It wants to be a natural happening, even as a giant event; you never want to be aware of somebody pushing play on a recording. It somehow wants to emerge out of the world and then recede back into it.

MARTI | One of the reasons Misha is one of my favorite designers is that he has this incredible dramaturgical sensibility, but he’ll approach the conversation from sound. As Romeo was dying, we knew that our Juliet would be waking up, and Misha came up to me one day and said, “Hey, but what if, actually, she’s literally waking up as he’s dying, and her fingers start to move?” So we put that into the show, and every night, audiences would gasp and be tearing up because of the deep irony of her fingers moving as he just drank the poison.

Because we had circled around each other for about seven years before we started working with each other, there’s a real trust and fluidity about the way we talk not just about what the sound design is but what is the moment, the directorial moment, or the vision that we’re trying to create together.

MISHA | These are definitely rooms that I like being in, and people I want to stick around, in which the conversation can be multilayered and not restricted to our disciplines and jurisdictions. When I start taking notes on things that might not necessarily have anything to do with me, that’s when I know I’m paying attention to the play or that I’m getting engaged.

I do find that this is the trend, especially in the storefront environment. Everybody’s in the same room, everybody shares a tech table, we’re all there a ridiculous number of hours. What happens, I find, as you get in larger theatres, especially in the regional world, is there tends to be a pretty serious segmentation. Everybody’s sitting at different tech tables, on different headsets; they’re not even talking to each other.

To work with people who foster conversations with other designers – asking questions, dramaturgical questions, or about directorial moments – I think strengthens the project, because there’s an investment in the final thing from everybody.

JIM | What are your steps leading up to a production?

MISHA | I get familiar with a script, but what’s interesting is that I often approach it from a sort of visceral, first-impression place, knowing that Marti, by this point, has read it maybe a dozen times and knows the beats in it. But for me, I like to start from: what does this world feel like? What is the flavor, what is the spirit of both the experience of the play, and of the world that they live in?

And then it is a little bit of a music-sharing situation, where we, either at the same time or individually, will start to make a playlist. Not necessarily the music I want to hear in the show or even the type of music. I find that, especially with Marti’s playlists, it’s a lot more about the intention or the visceral components of the music.

The first time we worked on Romeo and Juliet, Marti put together a playlist that was full of very contemporary sounds, and some obscure and fairly complicated sounds. Little of it was reflecting the palette conversations that we were having, but what was interesting was that it wasn’t intended to redirect; it was actually helping us understand: ‘We’re talking about this palette, but I want this palette to make us feel like this,” or “I want this palette to do what this song is doing, in its own palette.”

“At no point do you want the audience member to think, ‘Wow, that’s a really interesting sound design choice.’ because then they’re not watching the play.” – Misha Fiskel

MARTI | I don’t work with all designers off of playlists. I have some great sound designers who don’t have Spotify; it’s not their deal, and they’re brilliant designers. But there is something – and maybe this is unique to your process, Misha, or maybe it’s something we’ve developed together – but there is something about that journey from music to sound effects. There is something about the process that you and I have where we have to figure out the world first.

JIM | What are your thoughts about the future of sound design?

MISHA | Augmented reality is becoming an ongoing conversation; there’s a lot more site­-specific or immersive experiences. So we’re taking the theatrical experience outside of the more standard theatre seat. The Encounter could happen anywhere; it just happened to be in a theatre, but it didn’t have to be, right? It was so much about a personal experience on the headphones.

There’s a lot of interest in binaural audio and a much more nuanced experience of it. I’m also realizing that there’s a connection with scalability of theatrical experience. I, almost on a weekly basis, am having conversations about podcasts or recording plays, or film, that are somehow an extension of the theatrical experience. How does that translate, or do you proactively create content that can be experienced both live and in the privacy of your own home or your car?

I suspect that we’ll be having a lot more conversations about how to create experiences that, in the moment, can break or challenge our perception of reality in a more direct way – not just conceptually, but actually. And then how do you take that experience and make it available to people outside of that moment, exactly? How do you put it in your pocket? How do you give an opportunity for someone not in the same space with you – but sharing at the same time – to experience that as well? That’s my thing that I’m excited about and what I’m seeing emerge.

JOHN GROMADA + JACKSON GAY

Sound designer John Gromada works regularly on Broadway and regionally. Nominated for a Tony Award for his design work on A Trip to Bountiful in 2013, he started the 2014 petition to put sound design back in the Tony Awards after the category was eliminated that year. Jackson Gay is a prolific director whose Off-Broadway work with new plays by playwrights such as Lucy Thurber and Rolin Jones has yielded many celebrated productions.

JIM | When in your process as the director do you start thinking about sound? And when you do you bring a sound designer into a given show?

JACKSON | From the very beginning, along with all of the other designers. Ten or 15 years ago, it was a new thing, that the sound designers were treated the same way as everybody else in terms of being a part of the collaboration from the word go.

JOHN | I’m still surprised that we are mostly invited to be part of the process from the beginning now.

JACKSON | When I first started directing in grad school, it was already changing there, even before it was changing outside in the real world. Luckily, I wasn’t ever really working at a time when the sound designer was treated more like a sound engineer position. Or, more likely, I wasn’t aware as much that it was happening. I worked initially with sound designers from school, and they were adamant about their place at the table, probably because they knew the history of the struggles of designers in their field.

JOHN | Where that attitude has remained has been Broadway. That’s the Tony Award debacle. Tony management has considered sound design to be a technical category and not a design category.

JIM | Let’s talk about this project that you’re jumping into: Bekah Brunstetter’s The Cake at the Alley Theatre.

JOHN | I think Jackson and I both had a clear idea about how to proceed after we heard the play, which is often the case. Before that, it’s like scoring a movie before you know what the movie is. Often, you get so many clues in the first rehearsal, actually hearing the play, understanding it better, understanding the rhythms of it and how it works.

JACKSON | This is our first collaboration. What’s exciting is knowing that our collaboration is making something that’s alive, that’s changing within the realm of what’s right for our world. It’s changing in the room. It’s great having somebody who gets that and wants to be a part of something that moves – someone who wants to be a part of a dramaturgical exploration and understanding of the play.

JOHN | That’s another difference between now and 15 years ago. We are part of the understanding of the play. Before, you used to go away and get this whole list of cues and come back to rehearsal, but now it’s really about understanding what the story is together and how to tell it. Now that we’re in rehearsal, I can see the director’s ideas and she can come back to me. It’s much more collaborative than it used to be.

JACKSON | It’s funny – you rarely hear anymore a sound designer at the beginning of tech saying, “Here’s my list of cues.” Of course you have a list of cues, but it’s different; it’s not something where you just say, “Here are the cues and let me give them to the stage manager.” The sound designer is now doing what everybody else is doing in the room: responding to the work in the moment and adding to the thing, the storytelling, that everybody in the room is heading toward.

JOHN | And I’m finding more and more that fluid collaboration continues all the way up until opening. It’s so much more exciting now than it was because you have the tools to respond to things and build a design collaboration with the other designers and director in tech.

JACKSON | Yeah, if you change one thing on stage, just a different color to something that somebody’s doing, the sound also sometimes needs to change. It’s not just something that’s slapped on it to make a nice transition.

JOHN | I actually find that it’s better for me to keep flexible. I’ll arrive at a tech with a general notion and have things worked out as much as I can in advance so I’m ready to be able to change them. If I have a basic vocabulary going into tech, it’s much more collaborative to complete the design on the spot, responding to what all the other designers are doing and finally getting a chance to see how the acting and how the moments have gelled, and see how the scenery moves.

With this production, The Cake, there are a lot of unknowns about exactly how the transitions are going to work. We’re trying to figure out a language so I can come into tech with all these different elements that I then can arrange when we’re there.

JIM | How do you find that shared vocabulary and language?

JOHN | Jackson and I haven’t worked together before, so we are trying to feel each other out and what our common point of reference is. With a director that you work with a lot, you can refer to your own body of work together. You begin to develop an idea about what the other person is thinking and how we can then shape each other’s thinking.

“Stripping away, for me, is part of sound. I used to do these elaborate, in-your-face productions. Now people usually hire me for my discretion…” – John Gromada

JACKSON | When you have these brand-new collaborations, the first pa rt of it is just talking to each other to figure out how this person thinks. It’s speed dating at first. Luckily, With this collaboration, was immediately put at ease. John asked smart questions about the play, and his ideas were exciting and surprising.

I was so happy that John is somebody who wants to be a part of the process and wants to be in the room and wants to really dive into the play in a dramaturgical way.

JIM | You mentioned technology having changed to make this kind of collaboration possible.

JOHN | Because of technology, I’m able to have an idea I can immediately upload, send to Jackson or the stage manager, and get feedback that day. It used to be I would have to work until 5:30 p.m., print a CD, run to FedEx to overnight it to a director somewhere, then get up early in the morning, get to work again, and wait to get notes in a day or two. Now I can get immediate feedback.

Once we’re in tech, I have a mini studio. I have so much more flexibility to make changes. I have access to the internet so I can grab music, I can grab sound effects. I can’t tell you how different it is from when I started out.

JIM | Are either of you interested in the sound design that is pushing technology even further?

JOHN | I don’t really know where we’re going next in technology. I’m one who doesn’t want to force sound on a production. I don’t think every production needs a really elaborate sound design. If the story definitely demands it, that’s great. My first rule of thumb would be to ask, is this really necessary? My preference is to try to tell a story as simply as possible.

JACKSON | I agree and would apply that to any element of a production. If it’s not necessary, you don’t need it. Directing can often be a process of stripping away things that you’ve played around with, to leave the story with only what is necessary to tell that story. That might be a very present soundscape throughout or a sound design you’re not even aware is there.

JOHN | Stripping away, for me, is part of sound. I used to do these elaborate, in-your-face productions. Now people usually hire me for my discretion as much as anything. I feel like I’m a better designer than when I was younger and making really loud noises.

JACKSON | I think it’s a sign of confidence. It takes a lot of confidence not to throw everything at something. There’s a strength in that that I really appreciate.

JOHN | Often, what I’m asked to do is just show up to productions and I’m the person that is charged with connecting themes and coming up with a frame. I’m thinking, maybe even before other designers are, about the overall arc of the production. I’m trying to be less shy about doing that. I think sound designers can be relied on if you’re looking at the overall picture and movement of a play. Directors should mine them for information.

ELISHEBA ITTOOP + CARL COFIELD

Elisheba lttoop is a sound designer, composer, and producer of podcasts who brings her original compositions into her sound design. Carl Cofield, her frequent collaborator, is an award-winning director and actor who is getting to do more and more work that resonates with his goals for theatre and society at large.

JIM | You’ve had four collaborations together so far, starting with The Mountaintop at Cleveland Play House. How did you find each other?

CARL | Cleveland Play House put us in touch, and we had an initial conversation and just hit it off. I think we had a similar sort of vocabulary to pull from and the conversation didn’t seem forced at all. It was very fluid.

ELISHEBA | We tend to have conversations that just organically happen.

JIM | When you say “similar sort of vocabulary,” what do you mean?

CARL |  For me, it’s basically a lexicon of ideas. For instance, when we were doing Henry IV, Part II, I was like, “This is a bluesy world,” and Elisheba was like, “When you say blues, is it Billie Holiday or is it Amy Winehouse?” I said, “Yes! That’s it! That’s exactly what I’m trying to encapsulate.”

ELISHEBA | I took improv a lot when I was in middle school, high school, and a little bit in college as well. And in improv, they teach you the idea of “Yes, and… ” Carl says, “Yes, and… ”

CARL |  When you collaborate like that, enthusiasm and that kind of curiosity go hand in hand. There is the enthusiasm, but there is also a rigor to the curiosity. For example, if we’re saying it’s going to be Amy Winehouse, are we saying it’s early, or are we saying it’s in her darker period? There’s a really strenuous rigor to Elisheba’s aesthetic, how she approaches sounds to worlds, which is so satisfying.

JIM | Is music often your starting place for talking about a show?

ELISHEBA | Even before music. Before I even get talking specifically about sound or music in the world, !just want to sit with the team and vibe with everyone for a little bit. I want to hear Carl talk about this play world. Where he’s coming from. I wait a minute before I get too quickly over into “I think musically it sounds like this.”

Carl, I keep remembering with Mountaintop we all had such a nice introduction to each other because the show was in January, but before that – I think in August – Cleveland Play House flew us all out for the craziest commuter day. The design team got to just sit in a room and dream for a while. I find, as a designer, that’s not happening as much right now in American theatre. The design meetings are going away. Or you need to figure out how to do that on your own. And production meetings are happening instead.

CARL |  I think it pays dividends when everybody can get in the room and risk and listen to one another and bounce ideas, because who knows? I tend to hear things musically, and I think it’s like a jazz quartet or quintet when people get in there. We know the structure, but then there’s plenty of room to improvise. To me, that is the best sort of collaboration, where everybody’s meeting on the same footing.

JIM | How has technology played a role in your collaboration so far?

ELISHEBA | A lot of young sound designers come to a project and find themselves speaking in the language of sound design that is more gear-oriented. And not that they’re wrong in doing that; it comes out of a kind of nervous place. Out of a place of “I’m gonna show to you how smart I am.” They don’t need that.

I’ve learned that my director already has so much on their mind, I don’t need to come to call and say, “Oh yeah, we’ll crank that up seven decibels and I think I’ll notch out 450 hertz to really make that voice pop in that moment.” The call might be, “You know, his voice isn’t really popping in this moment.” And I’ll say, “You know what?That’s a really good point. Let me work on that right now.” Technology is something that I very much have to use to pull off what I do, but I try to not get into the nuts-and-bolts conversation with Carl and other directors.

CARL | I so appreciate that to allow my collaborators full trust. I depend on them to be “I got you here. I know exactly what you’re thinking.” You might not be. using the technical jargon for it, but “I got you.”

JIM | Are you finding there are more and more tools available?

ELISHEBA | There are always little toys, gear I can play with. But at the end of the day, a signal goes in, a signal comes out. In between, I can affect it in certain ways. Now, how the hell I do the affecting of things is definitely changing. There’s a lot of gear, but with something like Henry IV, Part II, just give me a decent microphone that our singer can sing into, a little bit of reverb, and make it sound very sexy. That’s kind of what I need in Qlab.

“Whenever there is silence in a play, I mean for there to be silence. That silence is a very pointed thing.” – Elisheba Ittoop

I don’t mean to oversimplify it. If you give me all the toys in the world, I will make use of them. But I don’t want it to be “We held for sound for three hours so Elisheba could fix that mic.”

JIM | What about organic sound?

ELISHEBA || I’ve done some sound designs that are Foley-based. I find that when I’ve worked on projects that use Foley work, or things in that “thunder sheet” realm, then there needs to be a highlight on how this is happening. There needs to be a moment where the sound designer, engineer, or the actor doing it needs to be highlighted. It’s its own form of sound design. It’s very labor-intensive.

JIM | In general, what are your philosophical aesthetics for sound design?

CARL |  It’s a case-by-case basis for me. I’m hugely in favor of asking how sonically this world is going be supported. But sometimes, quite frankly, sound is my way into the world. Henry IV, Part II felt like the aftermath of a night of – if Part I was a night drinking in the club, Part II was the hangover. And that was my thing: what does a hangover sound like?

ELISHEBA | I joke with people that “My job is to aid and abet the story.” At times, a sound event needs to be enormous, and you need to be incredibly aware of it. But a lot of other times, sound can be psycho-acoustic; it can be an emotional highlighter for a moment on stage.

JIM | What does “psycho-acoustic” mean?

ELISHEBA | It’s something we said in grad school, I think. Another word could be “subliminal.” I love doing stuff where you don’t even know it’s there, but you’ve put it into the room and it’s vibrating the room a little bit.

I just did a show where we were moving some cues around, and the stage manager said, “Oh, should I move the sound cue there?” And my director said, “Wait, what sound cue?” And I said, “I have a very low cello playing in that moment. It’s one note, it’s a low, sustained note. I’ve put it mostly through the subwoofer and I’m just vibrating the room at that moment.” It’s a cold moment; it takes place in the Holocaust and things are going from bad to worse. And I didn’t want to make things over-sentimental, so I just quietly vibrated the room with a cello.

So that’s what I mean by psycho-acoustic. You’re barely even aware that it’s there. But you would feel it not being there. Whenever there is silence in a play, I mean for there to be silence. That silence is a very pointed thing.

JIM | Is there a show, whether it really exists yet or not, that you both would love to work on together?

CARL |  I would definitely love to work on a folkloric tale of brown and black people with full-out musical elements, with Elisheba at the helm, designing this beautiful, complicated, emotionally charged, full-blown world. That would be a dream project.

ELISHEBA | More and more – and I feel very lucky, fortunate, grateful to the universe – as I climb this ladder of design in American theatre, I’m getting to help tell stories of marginalized people. People who were historically not allowed to speak. They didn’t get to write the history book for the longest of times. They’re not at the forefront just yet, but their stories are getting told more and more. Working with Carl has been amazing because I feel like he’s getting to help tell those stories a lot, too. I think with Carl I’d want to do something where it’s just brown and black people getting to really tell their stories. And there’s a lot of subwoofer, there’s a lot of reverb, and it’s these voices at the forefront.

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