Sense &
Sensibility
Sound Designer:
Jaden Leverett
Director: Karen Sheridan
Scenic Designer: Colin Franz
Costume Designer: Whitney Locher
Lighting Designer: Joseph Kocenda
Photographer: Jboone Photography
Concept Statement
Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austin, is a period production about asking the question about what's more helpful through the pursuit of love, following your head or following your heart? The story takes place in the late 1700’s in England, where the 2 main Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianna, embark on a personal journey in love and how to progress with both of their ever changing complicated love lifes and the expectation to be courted in their time period. Sound's position in this show was to auditorily create the different and varying spaces for the different characters to interact in. Whether that was providing the sounds of a park in the mid-afternoon, a thundering rainstorm, or the sounds of prying eyes judging a young woman for causing a commotion at a ball.
As a scene opens, it starts with party guests loudly conversing in their thick British accents. To create this voiceover I enlisted the help of all of the actors recording various lines and combined them all into one cue. Together it created a specific soundscape that made the setting of the party seem lively while continuing to stay in late 1700’s England.
After one of the main characters, Marianne Dashwood, is distraught over her love interest humiliating her in front of a crowded ball whispers come from the party guests. To allow the whispers from the party guests to overflow the space, I created a cue from recordings of all the actors from the show. For the duration of the cue it gradually gets louder to truly overwhelm the audience as if they're in Marianne's point of view. To finish my cue I added a door knock from the next scene to end the frantic whispers abruptly.
Sense & Sensibility Speaker Plot
For this show, I specifically choose 4 QSC K10's that were in the theater's inventory. I placed 3 of the speakers on unistrut angled towards the three seating units that were used for the show. However, for my fourth speaker I decided to put on a C-clamp underneath the theater's balcony approximately near Downstage Center. I choose that spot because of specific sound cues like rain and carriage sounds that needed to come from that general direction, given from the director's blocking.
Speaker Plot Plan View
