As a theatre sound designer, Nicola T Chang and Tingying Dong have both been people who I’ve looked up to aspirationally throughout and since the start of my career as examples of where I want to be in my career. It was incredibly life affirming that both of their guest lectures were in my first term of this course, and made me very happy that my previous experiences in theatre sound design were flowing into this course, and I was very much grateful for the opportunity. Sound as a design element in theatre can add dramaturgical dimensions to a piece, adding emotional layers and story beats which set scene and atmosphere in a way that other design elements can’t.
I think that Nicola’s way of thinking about sound and the poetry of it completely aligns with my own thinking about being a sound designer, all the way from thinking about speakers and plotting through to the poetic elements of creating spaces and silences. Capturing the fizz of a piece through sound design is really at the heart of this, and I’m just very glad to know Nicola as a professional acquaintance and to have been inspired by her in so many ways. I also really liked the ideas of ‘doing a lot with very little’, and ‘finding the heart of the piece’ as the starting point for creating a sound design. Also, the design tip of not saying the same thing twice with different design elements (not saying the same thing with sound that projection is saying, for example) is a really key piece of my sound design philosophy. Nicola gave so many amazing design tips that are going to be invaluable for the next shows that I design, as our tastes line up so much.
Ting’s lecture was really inspiring to me, and it was such a pleasure to get an exclusive insight into her unique process. Ting’s sound designs sit ambiguously between sound and music, which is always how I’ve intuitively worked – using naturalistic and processed sound effects in close dramaturgical response to a text in intense collaboration with others, which has been how I’ve loved to work since starting to develop my sound practice and journey. It was so amazing to get that detailed look at her process and I really appreciated, for example, her breakdown of ‘what we hear’ (soundscapes, music, atmospheres, textures) and ‘how we hear it’ (sound system) as a good simple way of thinking about it as I work going forwards.
Here is a screenshot of one of my QLab workspaces from a show in Christmas 2024 about Sherlock Holmes. You can see that I designed and programmed some preshow ambience, then the sound of a fight to start the show. The design language for this show was to switch between different worlds seamlessly, the world of London, the mind of Sherlock and an in-between state – a heightened London. The cues are marked by page number and cue line, which get put into a cue sheet, for the operator to fire during the show.
