Director: Julia Listengarten

Movement Director: Christopher Niess

Associate Director: Cory Kennedy Barrow

Music Director: Nora Lee Garcia

Scenic and Lighting Designers: Bert Scott, Vandy Wood

Costume Designer: Katherine Polgar

Stage Manager: Kayla Amburgey

The opening scene introduces the world and how it came to be. It emphasizes nature and godly power. As a scientist is narrating, the actors create abstract shapes and movements with their bodies, as if they are discovering them for the first time. Using wind to mimic their motions, this soundscape builds the world that the dialogue is outlining. Sounds of the ocean and a "god's spark" add impact to the words and enhance the visual imagery. At the mention of stars, distant chimes are heard glittering above the audiences' heads. 

After praising Midas' care of Silenus, Bacchus grants him his wish that everything he touches will turn to gold. Bacchus transfers this power with her breath. I incorporated finger cymbals seeing as live finger cymbals were used for any of his movements that turned items into gold, including his footsteps. I carried on the musicality by adding chimes trailing off. This sound was also localized to Midas and Bacchus' stage positions. 

Ceyx's sea voyage quickly turns into a nightmare. Rather than being a hyper-realistic storm, the director requested an abstracted concept. I designed a storm sequence that had a storm elements in addition to a tonal quality. This sound cue was complimented by the sounds of the actors interacting with the physical set, specifically splashes in the pool and thrashing of the sails. As Ceyx meets his fate, the perspective shifts as he is drowned and is delivering his final prayer. The storm and underwater atmosphere surrounds the audience to create an immersive experience. 

The character of Hunger is the personification of starvation, suffering, and greed. She slowly crawls on the floor like a creature out of a horror movie, bearing her teeth for the world to see. This soundscape is eerie and filled the space using surround speakers, making the audience feel as if they were Hunger's next victim. I was particularly inspired by the physicality of extreme hunger, including the sounds of bones and labored breaths. 

Following the trend of abstraction, Eurydice's snake bite reflects a shift in tone. The sound of metal rolling combined with a stark impact matched the sinister, foreboding motion of the actors' creation of the snake. 

The two versions of Orpheus and Eurydice presented encompass wildly different perspectives, the first being one of sorrow (Orpheus) and the second being of freedom (Eurydice). To enhance these perspectives, I built two different Underworld soundscapes, each reflecting the appropriate emotion, and used a crossfade to shift between them.

The moment when Orpheus and Eurydice reach for each other was extremely impactful and repeated five times. This instance of human connection inspired a sharp breath sound cue to punctuate the moment. It consists of two breaths and, with speaker placement, one was localized to Orpheus' blocking while the other was localized to Eurydice's.

At the end of the play, Baucis and Philemon's only wish to the  is to die at the same moment so that they are never without each other. When they die, they transform into a tree. This sample is a combination of nature and magic, including musical tones and sounds of leaves in the wind. The timing also mirrored the actors' movement as they created a tree. 

For our 6-piece flute ensemble, I used microphones to push and pull certain dramatic moments and transitions. Reverb added an ethereal feel to the musical selection, further contributing to the overall atmosphere of the production. In this show, music acted as a vessel for emotion, reflecting the experiences seen on stage through underscoring and transitional moments. As for music selection, I offered inspiration music for the feel or atmosphere of the show and the music director came back to myself and the director with specific pieces to use for the production. This sample opened the show. For ease of calling, the flute mics were controlled by QLab programming with MIDI cues.