Episode Seven - Transforming Sound - December 1st, 2023

The seventh episode of The Impossible is Only the Untried: a Prologue Podcast with Mandy E. MacLean.

In this episode, Mandy shares what the class found during their transforming sound session - a Monster! 

W. Ross Macdonald X Prologue Performing Arts Collaboration is supported by The Canada Council for the Arts and the Arthur and Audrey Cutten Foundation.

Learn more about the W. Ross MacDonald X Prologue Performing Arts collaboration at @prologuearts and www.prologue.org

Transcript

Episode Seven - Transforming Sound - Dec. 1st, 2023

(student voices) WRMS. W. Ross Macdonald. W. Ross Macdonald School. WRMS. W. Ross Macdonald School. W Ross. 

The Impossible. The Impossible. 

The Impossible is Only the Untried. 

(Mandy) Welcome to Episode Seven of The Impossible is Only the Untried - a Prologue Performing Arts podcast. My name is Mandy E. MacLean, and I am the Project Coordinator for the collaboration between Prologue Performing Arts and the W. Ross Macdonald School for the Blind.

In this podcast, we are sharing findings that are being discovered and questions that are being asked when we think about how to make performing arts more accessible to youth from the Low Vision and Blind community. A team of professional theatre artists - and the fabulous students of  W. Ross MacDonald are helping us discover techniques and strategies through our exploration! 

Over this semester, we’ve worked towards two goals: The first is creating exploration sessions with the class involving sound. The second is working towards implementing the findings of these sessions into the semester-end performance. 

This semester, they have continued to work on their piece “That One Drama Class”, it’s a fun story where a Monster overtakes the W. Ross drama class and the students save the school! 

Very early we realized this meant one thing: we needed a Monster! So let’s get into it.

This initial Monster was created using a prompt during our work in the previous semester and developed into the script by Kaela Gillian (the class drama teacher) with input from the students, and support from the project’s Dramaturge Leah Holder. Since the goal of our exploration this semester was to prioritize sound, it made sense to have the Monster occur sonically - we wanted to hear the Monster live in the space (to ensure it felt present and responsive), and we didn’t want to tie it to a location, we wanted to be able to manipulate it and move it around the space in real-time.

Therefore a student would be our Monster - and that student would be Abby:

(Abby) Hi, I’m Abby. I’m a grade twelve student at W. Ross. And in our play, “That One Drama Class”, I play both the role of Wren, and the role of the Monster. 

(Mandy) As we mentioned in our last episode; creating sound directionality when using playback cues is a way to increase the access of your piece - when you use live sound, and you move it around the space, and transform it - things get way more immersive!  

Richard Feren, the sound designer who has been experimenting with sounds at W. Ross, joined us for a session to create the voice of the Monster and apply directionality to it. For this exploration, we used the school’s auditorium, which includes an elevated proscenium stage, and two front-of-house speakers. We added 4 speakers and a subwoofer so that we could envelop the audience in sound. We set up a microphone backstage and played with distance. Each student had a chance to speak into the microphone and respond to a question that was being asked from the stage. This made sure the placement of the mic would be effective for our Monster to work with live during the show! 

Then it was time to move the Monster through the space. This made use of the directional qualities we had been playing with in the previous session, and it was super exciting!  

When moving it through the additional strategically placed speakers - it allowed the voice to move throughout the space, creating the illusion of the Monster moving. Imagine this flying above your head from the end of the space to the other:

*Monster giggling/cackling*

The human voice is of a relatively high frequency- therefore, the higher the voice you start with the more directional specificity you can find, and the more room you have to transform it - you have an entire orchestra of sound to transform and move around your space! For this experiment, we used 6 speakers, so imagine the specificity, excitement and even fright you could create with more. The possibilities are endless! Imagine this voice suddenly emerging from behind you. The kids said it felt like she was actually behind them.

The class made it loud and clear: combining directionality with transforming sounds allows for a further immersive quality - because adding external effects can allow for pitch and quality to be extended past the range of the human voice. Using effects like filters, distortion, and reverb, can help provide narrative info on anything. Like someone trapped in a cave, or a person that’s been turned into a dog - in our case we’ve created a scary Monster! 

*Monster giggling/cackling*

(Monster) You truly think those people are your friends?

*Monster giggling/cackling*

(Mandy) We’ve not only enveloped the audience in sound but we’ve also transformed and played with it! Combining directional sound and transforming sound is another way to more deeply immerse youth audiences from the Low Vision and Blind Community into a piece of theatre.

Sound is an amazing storytelling piece and the more strategic sounds you can incorporate from the initial concept into your storytelling - the more sound can take the place of visual cues for audience members of the Low vision & Blind community. After all, isn’t that what theatre is all about? Creating an exciting immersive experience for everyone?

I encourage all of you to come up with questions, and if you are interested in exploring more, please reach out to Prologue and continue this conversation. Visit www.prologue.org or find us on social media at @prologuearts!

And here are those amazing students to send us off - 

(student voices) The impossible. The impossible. The impossible. The impossible. The impossible. The impossible. The impossible is Only the Untried.