Playwright: Marco Ramirez
Director: Ameenah Kaplan
Scenic Designer: Carey Wong
Costume Designer: Rose Pederson
Lighting Designer: Ben Zamora
Sound Designer: Sharath Patel
Stage Manager: Jeffrey K. Hanson

Original Performance Dates

September 9 - October 9 2016

(c) A Contemporary Theatre 2016. *Original Music by Son House, Big Bill Broonzy, Furry Lewis, Ameenah Kaplan, Sharath Patel.

The Royale - A Contemporary Theatre

This production was probably one of my favorite shows to design mainly because everything the audience heard during the performance was actor generated. The script is a rhythm play set to its own pentameter which provided genesis for this sound design concept.  All of the transition audio, underscores, and soundscapes were generated and captured in the rehearsal process.  The director, who is also a chorographer as well as percussionist, and I worked hand in hand to create and record the transition music from the actors’ stomping, clapping, and snapping.  The crowd underscores of the boxing stadium were accomplished in a similar fashion but used in a different function.  Whether the action of the scene was in the boxing ring or in the locker rooms under the stadium, the stomping of the crowd was set to the meter of the script’s dialogue.  The soundscapes for the memory and knockout sequences were produced with body recordings utilizing specially designed contact microphones.  The goal was to create aural textures representative of the performer’s mental experience in that particular moment.  The body recordings were often captured as the actors were rehearing the intended scene to achieve this visceral effect.