Cost by Zizi Majid

Seed concept by debashis Sinha

created for triga’s eco-design charrette

climate change theatre action festival 2021

Deb’s Design Statement:

The work I chose to address was the play Cost by Zizi Majid, which tells the story of a man and his estranged son/family. Act 1 takes place in a luxury hotel room, and Act 2 at a street eatery in Mumbai.

In Act 1 I wanted to tell the story of the outside world encroaching on the bubble offered by high-end hotels (and high-end life in general). The futility of escape from the climate crisis was something I wanted to propose for this scene, with news playing in the background and the muted sounds of Mumbai traffic as part of the room tone.

Act 2 takes place on the street. It’s difficult to communicate how much street noise is part of the sound ecology of urban spaces in India. There is simply no escape from it. The roadside restaurants rest cheek-by-jowl with street noise, and most are in only rudimentary structures, so exhaust and horns form a big part of the sound world. I’m intrigued by the idea of perhaps setting this intimate scene in a massively loud soundscape, where the actors would have to speak almost comically loudly to be heard.

Sound is a tricky thing in theatre. We require it to expand the playing space and transport us to other locations (both internally and functionally), but of course plays are made of words spoken by people in/ on the playing space, in rooms, in architecture. Live, there’s limited room for some of the more detailed work of the sound designer in digital spaces, like building room tones, or managing background sounds.

Limitations of sound budgets and tech require inventive solutions, or perhaps a letting go of smaller details.

It’s always been my thought to use sound to shape our perceptions of the story, rather than for sound to be the story in itself. The challenges of building subtle environments in rooms with (e.g.) giant HVAC systems are ever-present, and we need to calibrate our design expectations accordingly and find nimble ways to present ideas - waiting for gaps in the dialogue, or building alternative sound delivery systems.

Digitally, of course, we have more control and I confess to enjoying that kind of freedom, where the sound designer is also set, lighting and costume designer.

In the frame of eco- and sustainable design, we have some leeway that those designers working with physical objects do not - often sound systems are already in place, and require little or no extra power or infrastructure to operate. What is the most efficient way to use these systems? How can my power requirements be mitigated and balanced with the needs of the lighting team, or hydraulics or other theatre magic? With the storytelling? It’s a question worth asking. It feels at this point to me that to incorporate designed sound will always have a power/electricity/sustainability impact, even when delivered through alternative platforms. There is no escaping it. To evaluate (sound) systems and sustainability in the theatre is a function of all the teams and technicians in the (sometimes virtual) building, and it’s an evaluation that I believe is taking hold in a more meaningful way across our storytelling experience.

Long may it continue.

ds
Toronto
January, 2022