Music: Breaking It Down
Production meeting tonight--sort of a continuation of the one last Friday, as budgets and schedules were finalized. This time I was able to discuss music with Mark Senior, our sound designer. He has some intriguing ideas, starting with 19th century Russian music but working towards a surreal or expressionistic soundscape which would serve to represent the storm "inside Lear's mind."
Because sound is very far from my own areas of expertise, I have a hard time imagining things until I've actually heard samples. The idea of a symbolic storm (instead of a literal one, with thunder & rain) is both appealing and disconcerting, so I think I need to know a bit more about what we'd be getting into. Mind you, I haven't read of any instances of productions where the storm has been "abstracted" like that, so we might be breaking new ground--which, for a 400-year-old play, would be pretty darn cool.
Because sound is very far from my own areas of expertise, I have a hard time imagining things until I've actually heard samples. The idea of a symbolic storm (instead of a literal one, with thunder & rain) is both appealing and disconcerting, so I think I need to know a bit more about what we'd be getting into. Mind you, I haven't read of any instances of productions where the storm has been "abstracted" like that, so we might be breaking new ground--which, for a 400-year-old play, would be pretty darn cool.
posted by Scott Sharplin at 10:13 p.m.
5 Comments:
I've been thinking about the "storm inside Lear's mind."
I think it might be really interesting to have phrases that the daughters say and phrases that Lear has said repeating at diferent levels. Like he is surrounded by the storm that he (and they) have created by their words/actions. He can't escape from it. It swirls around him, haunting him. Guilt about what he has done and about his reactions to what they have done.
Just some thoughts of mine.
Neat idea; I wonder if Mark could arrange to record some clips from rehearsals, and then edit them into the sound effects. They might be distracting--but then, Lear is in a distracted state, so that's sort of the whole point, isn't it?
If Mark finds the idea interesting too, I think it might help to establish that the storm is inside Lear's mind.
Perhaps there could be more of the phrases overlapping each other, and so on, at the beginning of the "storm." This could then mesh into the soundscape and become less verbal, but with certain phrases poping up again periodically.
What a cool idea!
I agree it is a risk that the vocal samples could be distracting, but I think it would be worth trying - if it doesn't work well, we can back it off.
I admit I'm a little leary of this having a similar effect to that of visual art with a lot of prominent text - which I don't tend to like - but I suspect this could be different.
I think moderation would be the key. Editing half a dozen different lines together would create cacophony--but two or three well-chosen lines could be devastating.
There may also be an opportunity to revisit the "voices in Lear's head" early in Act Two. At this point, the storm is long over, but maybe a wind or distant thunder, together with another set of "voices," could stir up Lear out of sleep.
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