Select Theater Sound Design

Cartography

Created by Kaneza Schaal & Chris Myers

Inflatable rafts on the Mediterranean. Dark holds of cargo trucks. Family photos wrapped carefully in a backpack that crosses border checkpoints. Inspired by the creative work with young refugees around the world, Cartography fuses map-making, dance, film, and sound sensor technology to explore the tragedy and wonder of lives in motion.

Design Elements: drums, metal, waves, song, vocal manipulation

  • Washington DC, Kennedy Center (2019)
    Philadelphia, FringeArts (2019)
    Cleveland, Playhouse Square (2019)
    New York City, New Victory (2020)
    Abu Dhabi, NYUAD (2020)
    Toronto, Young People’s Theatre (2020)

Everybody Is Gone

Created by The New Wild

Everybody Is Gone unites elements of journalism, live performance, and museum exhibition to provide audiences with a unique perspective on the ongoing crisis in the Uyghur Homeland. The immersive event offers audiences the opportunity to deeply and personally understand the impact of the state-backed surveillance and oppression that affect millions.

Design Elements: weaponized sound, oral history, feedback

For this show, I took real-world sonic elements - some intentionally hidden, others overbearing - and distorted them to emphasize the imposed oppressive situation audiences were placed in.

  • New York, The Celemente (2022)
    Berlin, Alte Münze (2022)

She Walks The Air (IX & XI)

Created by Chaesong Kim

She Walks the Air is an ongoing series of iterative intermedia projects created by Chaesong Kim on the intersectionalities of traveling fem bodies, lasting intergenerational impact of colonization, and embedded somatic memories of war.

Design Elements: water, air, oral history

Live Performance: live electronics with hydrophone, movement

  • Morningside Heights, public (2021)

    Columbia University (2022)

    Tompkins Square Park, public (2024)

Pawel & Ebola

Written & Directed by Marianna Ellenberg

Pawel & Ebola follows a dysfunctional brother and sister duo—the fictional offspring of infamous French neurologist and hysteria clinician Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot—whose world is disrupted by the arrival of a bizarre cult named “The Method”

Co-composed with Paula Matthusen

Design Elements: static/glitch, vocal manipulation, synthetic choir

  • The Kitchen (2018)

When We Went Electronic

Written by Caitlin Saylor Stephens
Directed by Meghan Finn

It’s 2011 and two American Apparel models are searching for their missing memory after a tragically fun nite. The sound design and musical arrangement focused around a variety of complex glitching electronic sounds. Some sparks carried into the music as percussive elements, elevating the highly electronic score, dense with multi-layered synthesizers and highly effected guitars. It all came together to form an audiovisual trip that felt both tight and trashy.

Design Elements: musical arrangement, synth-glitch-pop

New York, The Tank (2018), Rome, Off Theatre (2021), Milan, Menotti Teatro Filippo Perego (2021), Athens, Roes Theatre (2021)

  • Washington DC, Kennedy Center (2019)
    Philadelphia, FringeArts (2019)
    Cleveland, Playhouse Square (2019)
    New York City, New Victory (2020)
    Abu Dhabi, NYUAD (2020)
    Toronto, Young People’s Theatre (2020)