( a note from Daniel Perelstein, the sound designer for Shipwrecked! )
Sound and music are powerful tools for
storytelling, and Shipwrecked takes full advantage of the
broad range of ways in which sound and music are used in the theater.
My work on this show can be split into three main categories: the
music that myself and the director hear; the sounds that myself and
the director hear; and the work done to ensure that everything that
we hear gets communicated to you, the audience.
The script for Shipwrecked
suggests that the actors ought to create some of the sound
effects using “foley”. Foley is used in the film industry. It is
the art of creating sounds using familiar objects. Part of the joy of
the sound in Shipwrecked is seeing the creation of sounds
using unexpected everyday objects, the sounds which are familiar to
us. So, for instance, when Louis is typing his story towards the end
of the play, instead of using the typewriter sitting on the stage to
make the sounds, we had James (one of our actors) on the side of the
stage mimicking the typewriter sounds by using a change purse filled
with coins (for the keys), a concierge bell (for the typewriter
bell), and wooden coat hangers sliding against a metal rack (for the
carriage return). In the rehearsal room, the actors, myself, and
Jackson (our director) spent a lot of time exploring the sounds in a
variety of objects. Over the course of the play we make sounds using
objects including: blowing bubbles in a bottle through a straw,
rubbing your fingers over a piece of scrap wood, letting water run
off a mop (I referred to this as “swashbuckling”, which is almost
certainly not the correct name for it), waving strands of raffia,
rubbing rope against a wicker basket, blowing across the top of a
bottle filled with water, shaking a tin water bottle, using a plastic
fish to stir a paint can filled with water, hitting and scraping two
sea shells together, crinkling a sheet of plastic, shaking a thin
piece of metal, hitting a tin can filled with beans, turning a loose
knob that was the handle of a walking stick, smacking two pieces of
wood together, not to mention a large variety of bells and whistles.
The music in Shipwrecked
is a combination of music that I found and music that I wrote. Two
existing sea shanties are used in the show (“Haul Away Joe” and
“Sylvest”). The remainder of the music is original. I am a firm
believer that melody and motivic development are crucial for
storytelling in the theater, because unlike listening to a CD, the
audience only gets to hear my show one time. If anything they hear
is not clear to them on the first listen, it becomes confusing and
pulls their attention away from the action or dialogue that they
should be concentrating on. I like to introduce a very
small amount of musical material slowly over the course of the show,
taking one step at a time. And it’s important to me that all of my
material has significant melodic content. I believe that this is how
stories connect to an audience.
Although Shipwrecked is much
more dense than most 90 minute plays I work on, I still only use
about 4 pieces of music throughout the show. Every piece of music
recurs often throughout the show, in various disguises. The music
performed live by the actors on ukulele and melodica at the top of
the show (I referred to this as the “Adventure Theme”) comes back
four or five times throughout the course of the show, sometimes just
one part of it, sometimes both parts together, sometimes with
variations (for instance, when the octopus attacks it is played lower
on the piano and with significant alterations). The most important
piece of music in the show is what I called the “Mother’s Theme”.
This is probably heard as many as ten or twelve times throughout the
show. It is sung by Mary, the actor playing the mother, both in her
youth and as she ages throughout the play, sometimes with just her
voice and other times with significant effects added to her voice. It
is played on piano in a hymn-like rendition (the melody, along with a
chordal accompaniment) both towards the beginning of the play, and
later with a different set of harmonies, towards the end of the play.
It is played when Louis leaves the love of his life, in a version
that layers the Mother’s Theme on top of what I called the “Lover’s
Theme”. It is played in a very sparse rendition, high on the piano,
towards the end of the play and again as the basis of the harpsichord
salon music heard with the old British society ladies. This level of
familiarity with the material means that any small adjustment that I
make to the material really connects to the audience.
The last piece of my work on the show
is the production / reproduction of these sounds and music.
This is how I translate the sounds and music I hear in my head into
something that you can hear as you watch the show. I spend a lot of
time designing a sound system, and later tuning and balancing the
sound system, to make sure that all 14 speakers and 12 microphones
used in the show work together as an ensemble. I also carefully
choose and sculpt all of the different effects that I use on the
microphones to alter the way they sound, and choose where the sounds
appear to be coming from (both the sounds created live and the
pre-recorded sounds).
In my head, this process is all very
similar to the work I do coaching the actors on the music. I come up
with my own tunings for instruments so that the notes the actors will
need are located on the instrument in places that make things easier
to play. I use colored tape and mnemonics to make the music easier to
visualize. And I learn to speak to each actor in the language that
makes the most sense to them, whether that means discussing the
emotional impact I want the music to have or the technical means by
which they will be able to create that impact.
I hope you have as much fun listening
to the show as we had creating it!
