Hofstra Drama 20 – Sound for the Theatre

1:  Monday, April 15, 2013, 5:11 pm, Social Sports Kitchen

2:  Identify and list the sounds farthest away from you.

The large, wooden front door to the restaurant is propped open, so as business men and women trickle in through the swishing, inner set of glass doors and make a beeline for happy hour at the bar, I can hear the violent swiping sound of cars whipping down the turnpike at illegal speeds.

3:  Identify and list the sounds at a medium range from you.

The bay of televisions hanging from the ceiling is playing multiple news stations.  On a normal day, the manager Michelle sets things up to have the 30+ televisions to play coverage of multiple sports games and will play the audio to the most popular one or put popular music over everything.  Today Michelle is playing the audio to the news, but somehow the audio to multiple televisions is playing simultaneously.  This creates a strange, movie montage effect of many newscasters grimly reading the same sharply enunciated words over and over, echoing each other’s “Boston Marathon,” “terror,” “bombing occurred,” etc, as the tally of the injured climbs from 40+ to 80+ to 183.

4: Identify and list the sounds closest to you (– you can include internal sounds if noticed or relevant).

The guests at the bar in front of me eat in silence, eyes glued to the screens.  Nothing emphasizes silence more than the sound of a dozen people setting down glasses and bottles on a lacquered, wooden bar, scraping forks and knives against porcelain and not saying a word to one another.  The only people speaking consistently are a woman under TV 8 who keeps saying slowly to herself with sincere despair, “Oh my God, and my coworker, who alternately queries, “You need a refill, buddy?” and makes an unfathomably distasteful joke about amputees.

5: Describe the general sound level and amount of sound activity.

The televisions are loud, but the actual level of activity and the energy of this activity are very, very low and somber.

6: Assign a one-word description to the “sound environment”.

“Sober”

7: Select and list 3 sounds that are essential to the sound environment. Note: you need to try and figure out what sounds make up this environment and which of those sounds need to be there for the feeling of the environment to stay intact.

The cars outside don’t play much of a part in the aural atmosphere, nor do my coworker’s inane comments.  The abnormally slow pace of the dish-and-silverware clattering and the accompanying reticence, coupled with the intense choral effect of the televisions on blast and the punctuation of the woman’s upset “oh my gods” are the most necessary for setting the sonic tone of the day.