ZOUNDS, WHAT SOUNDS!
CRUNCH AND OOZE
LAST HALLOWEEN IN AUSTIN, SHAKESPEARE IN the Dark: Macbeth took the stage at the historic and allegedly haunted Driskill Hotel. Adding to the spookiness—and giving special power to its sound designer, Emily Duncan Wilson—the show was performed in pitch blackness, with the audience seated in the middle of moving actors and four audio speakers.
When the show, a co-production of Past is Prologue Productions and the Filigree Theatre, was in the planning stage, Wilson gave the producers a wish list of three tiers of equipment. It included “top-tier equipment, middle-tier equipment, and then a list of just the necessities,” she recalled. After the budget was reviewed, only the necessities remained. But Wilson said she found the constraint creatively freeing. “It was awesome,” Wilson said. “In the beginning, it was like doing a radio play.”
Indeed, she felt this production allowed her more of a directorial and dramaturgical stake than a sound designer—or any designer—is typically allowed. “Sometimes sound designers are brought on to navigate the crickets and doorbells,” Wilson said. “With this show, there was a lot more to figure out.”
One of her favorite challenges was figuring out how to differentiate separate locations, as well as mark the passing of time.
“We established the difference between Macbeth and Macduff’s castles with sound,” she said. “In Macbeth’s castle, there was an ominous, slow dripping. In Macduff’s, there was a crackling fireplace.” For outdoor scenes Wilson set the scene with forest sounds.
Wilson had worked with director Jennifer Sturley Because of their familiarity, Wilson said, the two were able to build an exciting “sonic iconography” to set the scenes.
