To Serve The Hive, producer & sound designer & publicity & set construction
Written by Julia Byrne, dir. Ezekiel Baskin, produced by Theater Between Addresses, January-March 2024
The Northeastern premiere of a queer political thriller set in a beehive, To Serve The Hive is a story as playful as it is darkly gripping. Using the parable of a beehive to interrogate and reveal truths about human systems of power, the story dances between the petty struggles inherent to a cumbersome bureaucracy to the extreme individual actions taken to escape the inevitable death of the hive from climate change. It is cinematic in atmosphere and Shakespearean in its tragic tone, transporting audiences into the beehive with an extraordinarily yellow set and immersively lush lighting, sound, and costumes.
Primarily I was the sound designer and producer, although I wore many hats in the process of bringing Byrne’s Hive to life. Contributing multiple fully realized graphics to the publicity efforts of this show, my work could be seen throughout Hampshire and Franklin counties on posters promoting the performance, as well as on Theater Between Address’ social media.
In collaboration with Little Wren Farm, I also provided graphics for custom-labeled jars of honey sold at our shows, benefiting the production and the hives of Little Wren Farm. We also collaborated with Massachusetts artist Natasha Wein of Berkshire Resin Art, to sell special-edition resin art made from found-dead bees and plants to benefit the production and the artist.
When we realized we needed a very specifically-constructed setpiece for a big reveal at the halfway point of the play, I stepped up with carpentry know-how to build and iterate on this moment. The human-sized hexagonal tube that I constructed can be seen in process photos of the stage and set; it was to be carried onstage by actors and placed so that another actor may have entered it and popped out, to the surprise of the audience. However, no plan survives first contact with the enemy, and after testing the piece in rehearsal we ultimately decided to strike the tube, and use black paper to mask an entrance through our stage-left flats, so our actor could tear through the flats as if they were “hatching”.
Designing sound for the beehive was a unique and exciting challenge: how do we take our audience inside a space they’ve probably never even thought of entering? How does sound create the illusion of a buzzing, industrious beehive while only six actors perform onstage? The design of this show walks the line between familiar and alien, ancient and futuristically sci-fi. The basis of much of the bees’ sounds comes from recordings of throat-singing, or overtone singing, as well as recordings taken from the actors themselves. The crushing gravity of contemporary noise music, the lightness of 90s-style ambient pads, the frenetic urgency of drum & bass percussion, and various manipulations of bell sounds added texture and depth to the story of the hive. The most notable piece of sound design for this play was the implementation of a 2-hour field recording from inside of a beehive, creating a warm thrum in the performance space that could easily have been mistaken for building noise were it not for the occasional buzz of a bee flying close to the microphone. This sound played underneath all other sound design, reinforcing the multitudinous population of the beehive. At the pivotal moment when all the bees leave the hive in search of the last bloom before the frost, the sound of the bees is taken out, leaving an aching silence in its wake, into which the final tragic scene of the play is performed.
This production is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Hampshire College Dance Program, Pine Box Studios, the Northampton Arts Council, and the Local Cultural Councils of Williamsburg, Hadley, and South Hadley, local agencies which are supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.
Unreconciled, technical director
Written & performed by Jay Sefton, dir. James Barry, November 2023
“Unreconciled is the true story of an adolescent actor cast as Jesus in a play directed by a pedophile priest. The story chronicles a survivor’s journey as he confronts his past and discovers the courage to use his voice and redefine what reconciliation means.”
-from the playwright’s official website.
I designed all lighting for this iteration of the show in Easthampton CitySpace’s Blue Room, creating effective and evocative lighting looks with limited instruments in support of the story and atmosphere of the play and its projection design. I adapted and implemented pre-existing sound design, using my experience with site-specific productions to ensure seamless integration of another designer’s work with a new space. As we learned more about this show over the course of tech, I also provided script and technical feedback as part of the play’s workshop process. Come showtime, I ran sound, lighting and projections.
Shortly after closing 3 sold-out shows at CitySpace, we took the show for a 1-night preview at Philadelphia’s Arden Theater. There, I worked with the in-house TD and lighting designer to recreate all of our lighting looks in the afternoon before our performance and called cues during the show.
Performances ran November 30th-December 2 2023, at Easthampton CitySpace’s Blue Room as part of the Pay It Forward program, and December 4 in Philadelphia’s Arden Theater.
Unreconciled is set to travel this year, with performances in Provincetown, MA on May 25th at the Fine Arts Work Center, and in Belfast, Northern Ireland on August 9-11 at the Cultúrlann Mc Adam Ó Fiaich (produced by the notable Geraldine Hughes). More dates and locations to come!
Grail Knight, music director & production support
Written by Sean French-Byrne, dir. Ezekiel Baskin, produced by Theater Between Addresses, July 2022
Sir Galahad, the last knight of the Round Table, is re-imagined as a young trans girl struggling under the weight of destiny and the task of fixing Camelot, now dying under the reign of a sick King Arthur and determined Queen Gwynefer. Galahad is joined on her quest by Sir Mordred, the king’s bastard whose fate is to tear down Camelot, and Lancelot, her blood father who has done the unspeakable to ensure Camelot’s survival. To Mordred, Galahad is a mirror of his own experience; to Lancelot, Galahad is an uncomfortable echo of his past. Together, they seek the grail and face their entangled destinies.
Grail Knight: An Immersive Play ran from July 21st-July 31st at the Three Sisters Sanctuary in Goshen, Massachusetts. The play took place throughout the breadth of the Sanctuary, and the audience was free to explore the enclaves and secrets of the space throughout the performance. Each audience member had the choice to follow the grail quest as they wished; each character had their own, fully realized story arc that intertwined with Galahad’s, and could all be followed independently. We recommended attending multiple showings to get the full experience of the Grail Quest.
I adapted and directed actors in performing acapella versions of original and extant music for the world of Grail Knight. The track list is as follows, with original songs in bold:
It Won’t Be Long Till The Walls Come Down (Wynn MacKenzie); Wild Mountain Thyme (traditional/Lucy Wainwright Roche); You Are Going (traditional); Strange Weather (Marianne Faithfull); Lullaby of Orkney (Wynn MacKenzie); Moon Shines Bright (traditional/Sam Lee); Crow on the Cradle (Lady Maisery); Never Coming Back (Wynn MacKenzie); Prayer (Leith Ross); Uncle’s Sweetheart (Part 2) (Madeline); Green Valley (Puscifer); As Tears Go By (Marianne Faithfull); Ocean-Vapor (Grace McLean); The Humbling River (Puscifer)
I also provided production support in the form of cueing pyrotechnics, sourcing props, transporting and corralling actors & crew, and supervising audience & actor safety during rehearsal and performance.
A review of Grail Knight’s outdoor immersive performance from the Montague Reporter can be read here.
Grail Knight was generously supported by grants from the Local Cultural Councils of Goshen, Ashfield, Cummington, Conway, Plainfield, Williamsburg, Worthington, Westhampton, Charlemont-Hawley, and South Hadley, local agencies which are supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.
Pirates of Penzance, technical director
Written by W.S. Gilbert & Arthur Sullivan, dir. Steve Morgan, produced by Valley Light Opera, November 2021
A fun, local revival of the old classic! Pirates of Penzance is perhaps the most well-known and beloved of Gilbert & Sullivan’s light operas. I supervised sourcing and repurposing set materials for both acts, coordinated constructing and painting all setpieces, and remained on-set for every performance to make sure changeover at intermission went smoothly.
Plague Wedding, camera operator & technical assistant
Written by Abigail Weaver, dir. Ezekiel Baskin, produced by Theater Between Addresses, July 2021
A unique, innovative approach to live theatre in the time of COVID-19, Plague Wedding is a darkly comedic story about an old Jewish tradition finding new life in the dystopian present/future.
This production was written in 2020 and workshopped by my theatre company at the start of the global pandemic. After the vaccine enabled us to safely create work in indoor spaces, we decided on rehearsing and performing the play as originally intended, but live-streamed through 4 cameras generously lent by Northampton Open Media and presented so as to appear diegetic to the world of the story and to reach a wide audience safely. This piece was unlike anything I had worked on before; a true hybrid of digital and analog, drawing simultaneously from traditions of live performance and film.
Many of the technical elements of this piece drew from the artistry and abstraction of theatrical lighting, but captured through the lenses of our cameras in such a way as to disrupt the usual “look” of recorded theater. Digital editing applied directly to the livestream introduced animated, ephemeral elements that performers and crew had to respond to in real time.
A recording of the July 10 2021 performance may be viewed here.
Plague Wedding was produced with the generous support of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Northampton Arts Council, South Hadley Local Cultural Council, Amherst Local Cultural Council, Hadley Local Cultural Council, and Eggtooth Productions.
Grail Knight, concept artist & production support
Written by Sean French-Byrne, dir. Ezekiel Baskin, produced by Electric Lite Collective, May 2020
The first draft of Grail Knight was completed the winter before pandemic lockdowns were initiated. As such, we had to pivot our vision of the production from fully-realized outdoor immersive to Zoom play. In the strange beginning-time before anyone had even thought to do Zoom theater, we wondered, what does our play look like now?
Working with collaborators now scattered across the United States, we devised, rehearsed, and performed a totally unexpected version of the story. Originally expecting to be designing the set, I was now lurking in the background of every Zoom rehearsal, sharing a webcam with the playwright, but still wanting to contribute to the now painfully resonant ending world that our grail-seekers traveled through. Thus, I drew scores of concept art, illustrating the characters in their settings, far removed from our reality of quarantined cabin fever. Those drawings can be found in the Grail Knight concept art tab of this website, and they greatly informed our design choices upon execution of the fully-realized immersive production in the summer of 2022.
Recordings of all 3 acts of the Zoom performance may be viewed here.
Snowflakes, set design/lighting/props & production assistant & shot logger
Koby Leff and Jacob Sheppard-Saidel’s thesis/Division III, Hampshire College, January 2019
A semi-autobiographical, feature-length film spanning 2016-2018 exploring themes of grief, relationships, queerness, and identity. The film was shot over January term during winter break and was entirely student run and supervised, with cast and crew comprised of Hampshire students as well as outside collaborators.
I was part of the crew and took on multiple roles over the course of filming, but primarily helped design the set, lighting and props, assisted the production manager with time and resources during shooting, and was present behind the camera & in communication with both directors in order to keep detailed notes on shot/sound quality, continuity, and useability.
More about the film can be found here.
NIGHT TRAIN, co-director & sound designer & performer & set designer
Dir. Wynn MacKenzie and Ezekiel Baskin, produced by the Electric Lite Collective, September - December 2019
A devised immersive participatory theatre piece about grief, joy, death, and trains, performed as part of Wynn MacKenzie’s senior thesis at Hampshire College.
NIGHT TRAIN was devised, rehearsed, teched, and performed over 10 weeks in the fall of 2019 by a group of artists and collaborators known as the ELECTRIC LITE COLLECTIVE. It was born primarily of a personal and anthropological interest in death rituals & devised theatre, the experiences of the collective with grief and mourning, and an impulse towards devised mythology & ritual-making.
The NIGHT TRAIN tells the story of one Darby Dervil’s journey to the afterlife, witnessed by two close friends, two fractious, estranged brothers, a former professor, and the train folk who help carry souls such as Darby’s to the world beyond. Over the course of the 40-50 minute train ride, the audience sits alongside these different characters, sings with them, talks with them, mourns with them, and learns about the myth and mystery of the NIGHT TRAIN.
This piece was created without the use of a traditional script. A score for its performance was developed in the devising process, structured around the train ride and moments of collective movement, vocalizing, or singing. In between these synchronous collective moments, the events of each NIGHT TRAIN performance were improvised. The show ran twice per night during the third week of December, and further documentation of each performance as well as the technical details of NIGHT TRAIN’s design are available upon request. As much as possible, the use of digital technology was eschewed while creating this piece.
Measure for Measure, scenic & technical director
Dir. Hannah Simms, Hampshire Shakespeare Co. August 2019
Often Shakespeare’s work is envisioned with the period-accurate, crumbling decadence of the time in which it was written. For this version, we instead wanted to invoke a contemporary, urban surveillance-state. Levels and color were used in tandem with the actors’ blocking to highlight the issues of class and power that the piece explores. Lights strung along the front of the stage evoke the bokeh lights of a distant city.
Caeneus, scenic & props designer
Dir. Ezekiel Baskin, Hampshire College, November 2018
Caeneus was performed in the Red Barn at Hampshire College - a decidedly non-theatre space - and therefore necessitated some creative set design solutions. The story is set primarily on the decks of the mythic ship Argo as it sails through the islands of Greek legend, passing through numerous indoor and outdoor environments, but all returning eventually to the sea. Cloth of various weights, textures, and colors was used as a backdrop. The set included a functional ship’s bell and a 15’ tall sail that could be raised and lowered by the actors during performance. As this space had no “backstage”, each actor had a specific chair to which they returned after each scene, to witness the story of the play as their characters.