Electric Sound: Collective Creation and Sound Design
David Hudgins · Canadian Theatre Review · 2007
Sound design at Electric Company takes place in the context of the collective creation process that has been associated with many of the company’s works. It is not unusual for people to bring music on the first day of creation work, and since our process tends to follow the creative impulses of the group, listening and reflecting on pieces of music or sound elements as a company can quickly coalesce the larger elements and ideas of a project. Our first play, Brilliant! incorporated pieces by Bartok, Stravinsky and Britten in the earliest writing stages, during scenes that suggested movement and emotional arc. Much of that early design exists a decade later in the ongoing remounts of the play. We worked many physical sequences set to music in theatricalizing the relationship between the famous inventor Tesla and the New York socialite friends Robert and Katherine. Eventually, these scenes fell away as the script evolved, but not until they had served their purpose of informing us as writers/actors/designers of nature of the narrative we were portraying.